Don't Blame Me! - I Hope Nothing But the Worse for Him

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Meghan and Melisa give advice on: Dealing with a friend who fat-shames Maintaining adult friendships Sex shame because of religion Garbage ex becoming famous on Tik-Tok Buy our merch: https://store.dftba.com/collections/don-t-blame-me Subscribe to our new show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/but-am-i-wrong/id1591757891 Follow Us! @meghanrienks www.instagram.com/meghanrienks https://twitter.com/meghanrienks @sheisnotmelissa www.instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa https://twitter.com/sheisnotmelissa @by.meghan.and.melisa https://www.instagram.com/meghanandmelisa Affordable Therapy By State (Curated by Crissy Milazzo): www.tinyurl.com/y64kwdnf Need Advice? www.dontblameme.show Domestic Listeners Call: [phone] International Listeners Send a Voice Memo To: [e-mail] … with as much detail as possible under 3 minutes! WeI'll do our best to share our wonderful words of wisdom. If you're under 18, please get your parent's permission. Advice is for entertainment purposes only, so you can't blame us if we screw up your life. I kid! Our advice IS AMAZING. Want to WATCH this episode as well? Become a patron! https://www.patreon.com/dontblameme Join the Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/dbmsecretgroup Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/join/dontblameme Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hello everyone welcome to another episode of don't blame me an advice podcast with two people who give wonderful amazing life-changing advice that you take or you don't okay hey and if you don't take it then you can always write into our other show but am i wrong and you probably will be wrong because you didn't take our advice true true true true good call thank you so how were we qualified and because besides from being so hot and gorgeous and smart and funny we also just have microphones in a podcast and if you want to give advice to people you can make your own podcast i can't promise how good it'll be and we are the we're in the top yeah i was gonna say were the pinnacle the pinnacle of amazing advice podcast and the rest are done by like therapists

all right dr ruth yeah you want like ethical advice go there yeah you want real like friendship bitch advice yeah you want your friend to be like yeah you should go through his phone i think you should do that you think that there's something there yeah something there if some guy fucks you over and you find that out when you're in his house i think you should rob him yeah and that is the kind of advice that you will get here so if you think that there's something on his computer and then you look and it's a succubus witch then you know uh-huh and you should call us and tell us yeah but hey if you're new here that already happened that already happened scroll back through the episodes listen to it and there was like multiple three updates

yeah i was about to say her name sorry me too that's what they shout out we love you um so if you want to join us and you want to call and you want our amazing wonderful advice leave us a voicemail at 310-694-0976 and international listeners we did not forget about you you can send us a voice memo and email it to us at meganpodcast at gmail.com for both of those instances you have to be 18 or over have your parents permission and you have to keep it under three minutes both times three minutes from the time that you hear the beep or three minutes from the time that you start pressing record and to make the best of your call write everything down practice a couple times time it out see if it's under three minutes

have all the relevant information include your pronouns if you want the pronouns of people in the story but we really do that is like optional if you want to but please include ages and if it's about relationships how long you've been together we want all of the relevant information and literally write down sentences you don't have to do bullet points just write down and read it perform it this is your think if like lizzie mcguire could have written her graduation her middle school graduation speech how much better it would have been if margaret chan would really want me to have a glass of water right now think of what her middle school valedictorian speech would have been think of this as your valedictorian speech and you don't have to be valedictorian to

give this speech but write it down prepare ahead of time i saw somebody on twitter say that high school graduations the person that is ranked lowest in the class should give the speech so you can compare and contrast i would love that i would love that so much i think it's a really what is school and also i'm sorry i don't want to hear the smartest person like i don't relate to you no give me like the definition of my a mid student at my school we didn't it wasn't the valedictorian it was the senior class president i couldn't even tell you who fucking spoke at graduation anyways um yeah so don't worry big shoes to fill for the call really doesn't have to be that intense you can listen to other episodes if you've never listened before you've

never called in before what if somebody literally has never listened to this show but they just call it i'm sorry people have done that before there was one call that someone did that they were just like they said something that i was like you've never listened to like one episode like you have no i they're like i don't really know how to do that and i was like what i thought that was just was guessing oh maybe i was being real but i felt like they had never listened before and i was like imagine having that much main character energy you like listen to a podcast you're if you put anything you want to call in about that yeah i'm gonna call right now if you don't know that we're not like serial killers like you're not gonna do any vetting before blind trust love it so the

updates stood us up so here we are anyway should we get in the calls i guess we should Hi, ladies. Long-term listener. First time calling in. So, to get this started, let me just start by saying I'm a plus-size woman who uses she, her pronouns. The other day, I was talking on the phone with my friend, who we will call Betty, who also uses she, her pronouns. Betty is a straight-size person who used to be somewhat on the bigger side, but I would not consider her a plus-size when she's at her biggest. While on the phone the other day, Betty started talking about this woman who she knows used to be very mean to Betty regarding her weight. Now, this woman has recently gained a lot of weight and is now plus-sized. Betty was talking a lot of shit about her weight and how it makes her less attractive and other negative comments regarding her weight gain. Now, I feel like I was very neutral and calm when I pointed out this conversation was mean. And when Betty started to defend herself, I reminded her that she was talking to a fat woman while shaming a whole thing fat and being fat is not a bad thing. She tried to justify the conversation, but I kept saying that I was the wrong audience with and tried to shut down the conversation.

Now, we hung up two minutes later, and I thought everything was fine. But when I called her later, she didn't pick up and never called me back, which is great because we literally talk on the phone 24-7. So she calls me, like, 15 hours later and complains about work. I bring up that I thought she was mad at me, and she tells me she was. But he says she was mad at me because I called her out and misunderstood her with what the conversation was really about. i'm now kind of mad and my feelings are honestly hurt that she didn't realize how what she was saying would have hurt my feelings and i don't know if i should leave the situation alone or if i should bring it back up and tell her her feelings because i just if this is what

adult friendships are like i don't know for reference we are both in our mid to late 20s and i just i need advice on how to handle a situation now that my feelings are really hurt and i just i don't know any advice you guys have regarding situation and and in another time when this kind of stuff gets brought up how i should react appropriately thank you guys so much bye man fuck betty like this isn't you reacted appropriately yeah this isn't how adult friendships go no one period should be talking about how anyone looks physically at all but like when it's adults in their late 20s this is just utterly ridiculous and she's playing victim but she's also projecting yeah and so like you have every right to feel the way that you feel and she

is the one that's wrong and like someone that just feels so free to talk about anybody's physical appearance like this is just not they're just not like a good person no i like one of my absolute favorite phrases that you use that like i use in my adult friendship life is like i'm the wrong audience for this. And like, I will say that where it's like, we're talking about something and someone feels a certain way. And it's like, well, no, I'm, I'm definitely not the right audience for this. And that I think is a really clear and concise way of being like, what you are saying does not just affect the person who you're talking about, like you, that is affecting your audience, like I relate to this, and I'm not going to be the right conversationalist for you. If you

want to have this conversation, I don't think you should, I think it's going to be problematic, or offensive but if you're going to have it I'm asking you to take me out of it like and if your goal is not to hurt my feelings if that once that statement happens that is like an immediate like oh I'm so sorry like that was not good but like you don't if you don't see that to me this is just like so her justification was this woman used to bully me when I was bigger than I am and so now and that's why i have these feelings towards her and now i'm going to make fun of her for her weight so it's like so you just internalize that as truth and then you use that against her it's just fucked i don't think you i don't think you did like absolutely anything wrong i think you

like i don't know i mean to be fair i would yeah i would probably call and be like honestly like if you think that this friendship like is worth this it seems like it is for you like you talk all the time I would just be like you know what I've been sitting on this for a little bit longer and the fact that I thought after our conversation I thought I had kind of gotten through to you and that made me really happy because I don't ever want to think that you're intentionally saying something knowing what you're saying is a fat phobic but then also I've told you in that moment that you're hurting me and I would never want to think that you would continue on without knowing that but now knowing that you are still upset with me

like my feelings are hurt all over again because it feels like I didn't get through to you at all and I just don't think that anyone regardless if you like them or not there is no like exception to being like fat phobic of being like well no i'm not fat phobic it's just this person it's like no no it's it's a you she literally said because she got bigger she's less attractive now and it doesn't exist in a vacuum like you can't say that and just be like well no it's the same thing how i feel about people like well i'm not fat phobic like to like when thin people say specifically i'm like not fat phobic at all but like i don't want to be fat like and i like that's still fat phobia like and that's just like it is what you can't have these exceptions to

it and phobia literally means fear of yeah and it's like well i just don't think that i would like that and it's like again i don't think anyone is at this point i specifically don't think women are born not being fat phobic because our society is so fucking fat like we there's so much to unlearn and you guys are in like your late 20s and i think if she doesn't take this as an opportunity to learn and like listen to what you have to say and she like maintains being defensive i think you probably should reevaluate what the friendship brings to you and if like you can get past this because i don't think that you should have to like i think she could be a great friend in every other remark but um there are certain things to me that are automatic one-time deal breakers if

i've corrected you i've told you how it makes me feel and then i've also told you like the bigger issue and you double down and you don't want to change that is like indicative of like someone that i don't want to spend time with but yeah i'm sorry you had to go through that situation and also like still going through it because this is still somebody that you consider a friend yeah like i just wouldn't feel comfortable around her ever because that means like if she's probably talking stuff about everyone in her life like i just don't i don't trust this because she doesn't care about your feelings no that's the part there's like and like she made you believe that she was taking like and then she played victim yeah that's the part that to me is

like it's one thing to make a mistake and say something and then especially if i say something even if i like might disagree in the moment i'm gonna take a step away and oh the shame will shed it set in and it's just like oh i've been i've been ruminating on this like i've been feeling so bad about this i'm gonna i'm gonna call this person apologize but when instead she got off the phone with you and that anger continued to like bubble and that victimhood can do all of that stuff when you left the conversation being like you know what that was a productive change hopefully that this will be different and then the fact that it's not I don't like that because I also don't like the implication that you're thinking about me and this conversation when

I'm not around and you're getting more and more like you're making this more and more about you and like you're all of that stuff I'm just like oh so you really didn't take in how I was feeling right at all i don't i don't like this one bit all right next call hi my name is melissa i was needing some advice on navigating friendships as an adult i'm 19 pronouns he him and the friend old song about the story is also 19 pronouns see her we'll call her lily me and lily have been friends since freshman year of high school typical best friends the whole thing and i expect us to kind of drift after high school not really being as close pulling i said that summer after high school was the last time we were really buddy buddy and then like we had

get ready for college. And for context, we both went to colleges in the same state as our high school. And not to totally duck myself, but pretty small state. In fact, the smallest one. You can totally bleep that out if you need to. So college starts. And obviously, I can't give you a play-by-play of our friendship, since that takes too long. I tried. Anyway, we've had a scattered amount of times from September to August, about 8 to be precise, all about 5 to 10-minute condos. Some might even mean full conversations. We hang out in October for an hour. Nothing crazy, since it's only been a month since we've seen each other after that attempts to hang out where I say yes I tell her I'm free and then she says yes and then you know just really follows through and

then even on my birthday in January we couldn't really hang since she went back to school a few days prior and you know she didn't even wish me a happy birthday so I made sure to wish her a slightly more meaningful happy birthday out of pettiness um we almost hang out in July but she gets COVID again you know after her quarantine um she made plans to hang out with a girlfriend I know her girlfriend was like partially why we didn't really um hang out as much even though um they did go to the same school you know um and they've been dating for about 11 months as of I'm recording this you know anyway uh we finally hang out the beginning of August we had a late lunch um pretty patchy for an hour might have just been me but it was kind of awkward not fully

but partially you know that was good and then like we haven't talked since then it's now September So what I want advice on is this is how adult friendships are supposed to be, you know, playing catch-up, not frequently talking. Am I just being a naive 19-year-old expecting too much? I know it's a great podcast, but am I wrong? Is Lily wrong? Are we both just trying to navigate being adults? And I have since talked about a community college,

so any advice on making more friends would be great. Lily is like my only friend for contact, so that's why I wrote in. I don't really have other friends to fill in the gaps. Anyway, be harsh, be kind, whatever you need to do. I'm an Aquarius sun, Sagittarius moon, Leo rising, and she is an Aries. Thank you, thank you so much. You guys are great and never wrong.

Bye. Thank you. That's the pace I love everyone talking about. I don't. That's like. I had to read along with it. That is like how my brain works. Like, I was like, perfect fault.

Until you said that he was talking about it, I was like, you were? Like, it was just. That's how you talked pretty long. I know. R.I.P. No, but it's slower. maybe I'll get that lung capacity I kind of hate to say yes but this is kind of how adult

friendships are and I don't want that to be like a kind of like depressing realization because there's something unique about adult friendships where you have proximity friends growing up like who was your friends you're like school in high school and that actually doesn't change when you're an adult is just the circles change so you give your work friends you have maybe you become friends with a neighbor you friends with people who you have like classes with you have friends who like live close by to you if you live in a city and it just happens like more often you could have a friend that you see all the time because like they live right by you and then they move like 10 minutes away and then you used to hang out with them like literally every day

even though you just became friends and then you don't see them as much and I think it's always going to feel kind of hard, but you do need to broaden your, like you said, you need to like make some other friends to kind of like fill the gaps there. I think it is hard when you have friends that you've been friends with for a long time. The kind of transition into adult friendships is much harder than making, when you make friends as an adult, because I think that's just how the friendship always is from the beginning. And my biggest advice would be to like had that friendship with people you don't know like like new friends that you're making just in your adult life but the 19 to like 21 22 is a unique part of like that's a really

hard time to make friends as somebody who was in college and also dropped out of college it's really hard because like if you said you they're not you're no longer in community college it is very hard to make friends in that window if you're not in school and then just becomes your only friends are people who are in the same like positions as you and then you probably end up spending way too much time with them and then you get sick of them and then there's other friends like I don't want to say I think friendships are the easiest in theory when we're in school and we're kids and we're younger but you're forced to be around a lot of people so like it can be really hard. And then as an adult, you're not forced to be around any people.

But that brings its own challenges. And I think it's just navigating. I don't know, I like when I'm embarking on like new chapters of my life, I think it's important to like keep people from your past and keep all that stuff. But I do think it's really important to set roots or start new things in new places with new people because it's really hard to move forward when there's like a whole like your whole social life is tied to like something else because you're going to compare it over and over and over again yeah I think for me I went through different well first of all I want to preface this by saying that I really don't have childhood friends because I moved around so much as a kid and then my high school friends once we got to college the relationships just

changed because you're around more people so the people that you went to high school with aren't necessarily the people that you're gonna be like lifelong friends because you're transit like there's a different transition within your life I mean like you have a few of your friends still from high school I don't talk to any of mine like from high school to college there were still like even like my best friends that I had in high school when we got to college we just grew in different directions as people and as friends and there was one that lasted my entirety of college until black lives matter and donald trump came along like black lives matter movement and donald trump and she's very much a trumpy and like she was still trying to be friends with me and i was

like this is just we don't have the same values at all and i just did not feel comfortable around her and so like she and I are no longer friends and then like even my college friends a lot of us we're still in contact I consider a lot of them like still my best friends but we like maybe see each other once or twice a year if that some of them I haven't seen in a few years but we still talk all the time and like you just have to put like how what kind of friendship do you want I like you still like if you you're still talking to each other then great but then i also you know have when i moved to even when i moved to california the people that are were friends with when i first moved here life happened and we moved into separate directions and then like

i mean you and i've been friends for a while now very long i can't even tie that fucks me up yeah yeah we've been friends for a while now but also like we worked we like our business partners and so it's kind of but we're not like work friends as in we see each other every single day we don't text each other we do see each other at the water cooler at least once a week because musa literally has a water cooler inside for her i do but like we do but we're friends but also business partners i have other friends that i also work with but it's not in the capacity of like people that have like a nine to five so it's a different like we're actually like actual friends not just work friends and then i have other friends that i met that have

i've become i've become i want to say i'd probably say like just because of the industry that we work in 90 of the friends that i have i probably have met in the industry but we also don't pretty impossible to yeah because there's not really anything else here yeah and so i have those friends too that i talk to them a lot but we still may see each other like once every few months and we make jokes about like yeah we're gonna get together uh-huh we'll see but like people are busy you've got jobs during the day and then like on there's during the weekend you might want to decompress and like you can't think of friends in the same way as how you thought about it in high school because in high school you were literally seeing them every single day

for how long the school lasts four years oh like i don't know too long for long you're fucking at school and then extracurricular activities and things like that so you're gonna see your friends when you see them but it's just like all about the kind of relationship that you want with them yeah and it's hard like i'm not gonna say it's not hard like i have since i graduated high school i've had like a very hard time like dealing with the fact that my friendships are going to be different out of high school and i wish that i had like i don't want to say that I'd like taken a cue from like other people but I wish that I had done my best and I could have definitely not done better at like fostering again like my own relationships in a new place

or doing something like that because it's really really easy to feel left behind when you're just like standing there but adult friendships are hard yeah and how to make friends you gotta go places places that you enjoy going maybe like look online and see if there's like meetups for things that you like and you just gotta go and just talk to people and hang out yeah volunteer opportunities here's a good one but making sure that the friendships that you're making are not replacing or trying to like step in for that friend that's like i always was like trying to find friendships that would be or fill the same spot as like childhood friends like hometown friends in a new city and I was like that's never gonna happen and I'm just setting myself up to be

disappointed and for it to fail instead of just taking people where they are and what kind of friendship that they want to have it's not about what kind of friendship I want to have with this person it's like what friendship do we both have the capacity for right yeah volunteer maybe if you're looking for getting like a job um finding a place that tends to have more than one person like on shift like working at the same time people who are around your age working if you are not going back to school and you're just getting into like work i would make it a point to find a friend who's in a similar position to you that was really helpful for me because otherwise all my friends were just ending up being like a lot older than me and then it was important to me to like find

friends who are my age who also weren't going to college and like that was really helpful too so it was pretty chaotic because we were all just partying underage going to one oak one oak one oak all right let's take a break okay roll the tapes hi megan and melissa love the podcast and i'd love to get your advice so i'm a 23 year old female my pronouns are she her and i grew up in a very high demand religion that relied heavily on purity culture i was taught growing up that in the hierarchy of sins it went murder and then directly underneath it was sex before marriage and so I never did anything because I truly believed that if I had sex or anywhere in that realm I was going to go to hell

and my salvation was in question I have since deconstructed I no longer identify with that organization. But now I'm left in this space where I have absolutely no experience. I have never kissed anyone. I've never had sex. I've never done anything because I was trying so hard to be right. And now that I no longer believe that, I don't know how to approach this. Like, how do I approach sex now as a female in their mid-20s with no experience? Do I go for a one night stand, you know, more casual sex? Do I get in a relationship and then have sex? And I don't even know how to explain that. You know, how do I tell these people that I'm trying to date that I have nothing? I have no experience. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I feel

like i'm too old to not know what i'm doing and i'm not even that old and so it's leaving that religion and having grown up in that religion i don't know how to navigate this space now and i would really appreciate any of your thoughts and advice thanks you're not old you're not even you're not mid-20s i know plenty of people that you know that weren't even religious that were your age and they didn't have any sexual i know older people who didn't have any experience until and again also not religious so i would make i think it this is still probably some of that religious stuff ingrained in your memory and it's gonna be hard to separate what you know like as the religion versus what you like actually actually believe um and it's gonna take some time

but i would not like make age a factor at all into this some people have more experience than others at different ages that's the thing is that you just got to separate what you think should happen from what's actually there yeah i think that you have this you you know what happens in your former religion and then i think that you maybe don't really have a grasp on what 23 year olds who aren't in didn't grow up with that purity culture that religion or like like i think i don't know if you have friends who are not in that but like i would go out of your way to realize or to meet meet people and have interactions with um specifically female friendships of knowing that oh we might have come to these like life circumstances through different pathways

but we're still at the same place like there are people who are my age who haven't had sex and haven't had any experience in a relationship and that's not because they were religious or were in any sort of purity culture because I think the feeling of needing to catch up that you're like very behind that to me also still reads as like religious like I don't I'm not married I don't have a kid yet I don't have all of this like that there are these milestones but like the great thing about not being tied to a community that has like expectations and standards that those aren't there like you're never going to be like behind you're never going to be because there's nothing you're supposed to do because there's also nothing you're not supposed to do like it's just

it is what it is as for how you should go about this i'm pretty hesitant for anybody who grew up in with the mindset and in a community where purity culture was heavily enforced i'm pretty hesitant to recommend those people to just like make out with a stranger and have sex with like a one night stand for the first time it's psychologically that's just not how brains who have been developed in those circumstances work and even if you weren't a part of a religion just the slut shaming and purity culture seeps into like agnostic and atheist in just social circles and communities in in media and there is a specific kind of person who can have sex with someone for the very first time or do anything physical and they've never done it before where

they would prefer to be with a stranger and they're not going to see it that person ever again I don't think that that is the majority of people regardless of background and it might feel like a band-aid that you want to rip off but unless that is something that you want and you wanted for like three years I would not make that decision in that call because I think when there's any sort of trauma there when you get into like a physically intimate relationship you are putting yourself in a situation you've never been in before you don't know how you're going to like emotionally or physically react to that and you want to feel safe and I think that the way to do it is not as like a list that you have to check off that like I need to do this I need to do this

I think you just if you're interested in dating you just start dating and when like you're on a first date or something I think it's important in general I usually say that like something that's not going to change about you, if you feel safe sharing it in a situation, I think it tends to be better to do it earlier. If it's going to really hurt you, if that person is going to see that as a deal breaker. And it's easier, at least for me, when I'm like, I'm not as invested in this, if this is your deal breaker, it doesn't really have anything to do with me. But if we've been on 10 dates, it feels personal, even if it's not, because it's just so it's like, what's like, what about you? Like, what's new with you? Like, where are you from? Like, oh, I actually grew up

in like a really, really religious community. I'm like, have deconstructed from that. So I and you can like make jokes about it where you're like, I feel like Kimmy Schmidt sometimes I'm just like, oh my gosh, blah, blah. And you can like, hint or imply that you have like, I'm like have like zero experience, like, you know, you can make jokes about it. But I do think unless your goal is to have sex with somebody and then never see them again I think it is better to at least okay you have to evaluate for yourself if it's better if you would rather have sex with someone and that's the goal or and are you going to be okay if that person fine like just displeased you then afterwards yeah and but also like if you don't know your own body I would suggest to explore

yourself i don't know if you're you didn't bring it up if you're masturbating or not but so like try start masturbating try to just you know get used to your own body and how you feel in a sexual way also um i had a guest on another podcast that they're a sexological body work which is a thing and she talked about how she wanted like some of her biggest clients are people that have come from a very religious background and she helps people like deconstruct those thoughts that they had when they were in a religion as well and so maybe looking into something there's like different types of such sexological body work some people like help you like they can help you touch yourself like you can go and they can help you and it's not technically in most

states technically like legal i don't know where you are but it's legal in california but also there's other types that they can do it like remotely and just talk you through some things yeah i think that when you grow up with such a small world broadening your worldview i think you'll realize that like a lot of life circumstances are going to be pretty similar to yours just with different like I don't want to call it baggage but like the the different means to kind of get there and I think there are certain things where you probably feel like very very othered from society and from like other people your age but the more transparent I think we can be in general when it comes to like sex intimacy and stuff with like our female friends talking about it

the less alone you feel because we make up a lot of these things in our head that it becomes like this is my issue like this is all like this is and it's like well no like that stuff can happen in all different circles and we can end up in different places with different reasonings to that but I think that you will feel a lot less pressure and a lot less different if you can focus a on your own pleasure but then and focus on your friendships too and the rest kind of just comes as it is but i think no pun the last thing i'll say i want to really reiterate that anytime like i'm talking about like disclosing to someone that you have never had sex before if you think you are someone who would be very hurt if the person walked away i just want to make it abundantly

clear that like that is never applied also to people like to trans people like disclosing in relationship if someone if someone's deal breaker is someone who's trans that's transphobic like that's just transphobia and that is not something that is okay by any means but I think sometimes when it comes to intimacy and sex we can think if this person gets to know me more then my personality and who I am will make me potentially an exception to a rule that I don't even know that they have like a deal breaker I have friends who are completely fine dating people who have like never had sex before like they're like yeah no that wouldn't if someone was like a virgin that would not be a deal breaker for me and then I have friends who are that would be a deal breaker and

neither of them matter who it is and so it's important I think if you are someone who wants to have sex with someone and know that that person is like gonna stick around for at least some time period afterwards I think it's important to give people an opportunity to be okay with that and if they're not okay with it the longer that you wait and you try and make like propose it in a way that is like enticing that all you're doing there is making it about you specifically and that's a really that one hurts a lot more so other people are entitled to their like deal breakers and their boundaries and if anyone's deal breaker or boundary is that they don't want to have sex or be intimate with someone who's never been intimate before i honestly think that

that's a really good thing for them to communicate yeah but I'm happy for you that you are out of this and you're learning a lot and you're figuring all this stuff out and the world is a very very large place and the more people that you can meet from different like walks of life I think will help you just understand the world and yourself more and like what role you want to play okay best of luck all right next call yay hi Megan and Melissa this one might have a lot of info, but I wrote it all down, so here we go. I am currently 26, she, her, and this story is about my ex-boyfriend, also now 26, he, him. We dated in college, lived together, had a dog together, talked about getting married, did all these things way quicker than we should have,

and he struggled with mental health diagnoses from the time he was really young, and so do I, but at this time in college, he was actively rejecting any help in the form of therapy medication or otherwise, and he became physically and mentally abusive. It got so bad that finally I had to secretly take our dog, find a new apartment, and move out. I lived in my Toyota Corolla for a few months at one point between homes, all while I was 19, but after I finally got my own place and settled, he found where I lived and continuously tried to break in to the point where I had to get a restraining order. He then moved out of state, and I thought it was all over and I started to heal a few years later he pops back up in my life he weasels his way back

in as manipulative people know how to do and he completely destroyed me again when I was 22 but now I'm 26 I haven't talked to him in years I have continued the healing process for myself after this very traumatic relationship and he is and I say this with like my whole chest one of the worst people I've ever met aside from the abuse which was awful he was also actively working as a con artist disguised as an entrepreneur through college. So I truly hope nothing but the worst for him. But here's the kicker. He is starting to gain traction on TikTok.

So now he pops up on my FYP. And when I went to block him, I saw this weird following he has now and his new girlfriend. And she looks so fucking cool. She's like a tattoo artist. And just after seeing a couple TikToks, it looks like she's a really sweet girl. So my predicament is, is there any use in trying to tell her in any creative way what a garbage human he is? and how he might hurt her, because on one hand, we're all adults, and she has to make her own

decisions. And at the end of the day, me reaching out might only look like a form of jealousy, even though that is literally the furthest thing from that. On the other hand, if he were to hurt her the way he hurt me, and it went even further, I couldn't live with myself knowing I may be the only other person who could have warned her of how extreme it gets. So I'm sure that she could somehow find the record of him having a restraining order made against him. I'm also sure he could have told her stories about me to paint me as the crazy one to preemptively cover his tracks. i'm really in a pickle because yes maybe it's a little vindictive that i don't think he ever deserves happiness but moreover i am a girl's girl and i don't want anyone to suffer at the

hands of an abusive white man i'm scorpio i can take it if you need to be tough i just want to know what y'all would do in this situation thank you so much bye first of all who is he yeah send me his name i'll make a fucking tiktok about him yeah send the dm um and if you yeah yeah send us a dm yeah um he sounds awful and scary and no you're not vindictive this is this is what he deserves he deserves nothing but hell and fiery fiery gremlins just like ripping apart his insides and his outsides for the rest of time eternity yes like he deserves nothing but horrible things um i completely understand your hesitancy because you also don't you don't know if you are the only person who has this experience like with him and if you say something if that puts you you've worked

on yourself for so long that you don't want to like have that take any like steps back but also I don't want to suggest to you that like because like part of me is like you if you do some recon use some digging and you find out that he's done this with like some other people and then you know that like when you're saying something you're not putting like a target on your back but also like that's a lot of emotional work to do and I don't think you should have to do that right I'm also a girl's girl in that sense I think if you feel a calling to reach out to her in this situation I think you should do it I think that when I always when we say that like don't get involved I think it's when other people are telling you to do something that you're not comfortable doing

you're the only person who can make the call if you feel safe and comfortable to do something and if you do I don't think that there's any reason not to I think that like yeah she might tell you to fuck off she might not believe but what that does is it plants a seed and it might not be an immediate change it might not be an immediate shift it might not be like a this is all clicking but if something were to happen in the future or a pattern that keeps happening that will be in the back of their head i'm also really concerned about the following right because you know what kind of following he's getting he's just gonna get the same kind of guys that he is and they're gonna hear him and see him and think that he's successful i mean

you said that he's a con artist he's a scammer like he's probably one of these people that are like you want to be just like me here's a workbook for 40 or some shit like that he's not someone that should be trusted he's someone that should be called out and i think you're in the right mindset now to do that and also like i think that it's a good thing that you're trying to help protect this woman so you know again i want to know who this is me too i mean the power of tiktok we've seen this stuff happen where people have blown up and then people are like i gotta come forward and say this i don't think you need to do that but because he does have an audience i think if it's starting to gain traction i would think if he's kept up the facade that this is not who he is

with his audience that is probably going to change and his current girlfriend might be in the stages of realizing that and i think it's always better to it would be safer for her to get out now than to get out later if he's built an even bigger following and if she doesn't listen that's you know it is what it is choice yeah but i i don't think maybe he's changed probably not probably not maybe but yeah but i always think about it in like i would always want to know yeah i would always even if i choose to be with someone because like they're not like that now like it has completely changed like i would always want to know because i want to know what choice i make uh-huh and let's say something does happen like oh yeah and you and you like you feel like

that you could have stopped it then yeah you know if you know that you're gonna feel regret if you don't that's your answer yeah but also like are you concerned for your safety as well yeah another question that i would ask that's why that's yeah that's why this is hard because if you're the only person you know who's had this experience and you're the only person who's dated him like if you know any of his exes and you want to like reach out but that does involve a lot more like emotional work yeah the mental load of that is a lot more I don't know if you're still in therapy or currently in therapy but I would definitely like talk to your therapist about it I would definitely like make sure your restraining order see if your restraining order is up to date

and having a system in place where you feel safe to make that choice in that call to tell her and I also part of me does also wonder too it's like the the double-edged sword of like social media we're like making a video calling someone out for being like an abusive person sends all of people who hate women or abusers to then come to that side but it also sends the opposite of it like yeah it feels like it does kind of even out in the same way when you don't make it public where it's like you have a lot of people who can like hear this story and be aware and look out for your safety and then you have a lot of other people who want the exact opposite and that's that's really hard too yeah but i'm sorry that's atrocious and i can't imagine how traumatic it is

like go through that and then see it on see that person like on tiktok gaining a following for what they've done yeah trash he deserves nothing all right that's the end of the episode we do not have a don't blame them this week yeah y'all call in call in give us some your own input on calls that we've had on previous episodes. Oh, well, that is it for our episode. We hope you enjoyed. If you want to watch the video version or just you want to support the podcast,

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my only social interaction besides seeing you. you got you looked at cars this weekend who was i being social with richard from kia yeah rich richie richie rich so join it's a really good time we have so much fun if you are still listening head on over to our instagram and comment maybe just comment just how old you were the first time you had sex but just write the number and then no one needs to know what it is yeah that's actually funny cool and yeah call in for upcoming episodes leave a review on the podcast app we really appreciate it and do that because we want to read some for the next episode yes please we would like to read

some we would like our update not to stand us up and we would like some we're don't blame them look at us we're so demanding so needy give us a call we need new calls we're putting out you know extra episodes so you know look in the feed make sure you're subscribed there might be other things popping up in this feed yeah we're taking over uh-huh you're about to get sick of us about to be what is that prepare to be sick of me yeah prepare to be sick of me what is that from tiktok i thought it was from a tv show though i don't know but that's where i know me too but i thought it was like uh i think it was just somebody on tiktok the humor love it okay we will see you next time bye

don't blame me is a production by me executive produced by melissa de monts and diamond imprint productions edited by coco lawrence post-production sound by chris henry production assistance by melanie d watson music by ryan hunter and giacomo picasso