Don't Blame Me! - Keeping A Secret From Your Boyfriend

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Meghan and Melisa give advice on: Dealing with your controlling parents Developing feeling for someone who just wants a physical relationship Communicating with a friend that has been unresponsive Researching your sister-in-law's counselor Don't Blame Them: Getting over being dumped 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 @dontblamemepod https://www.instagram.com/dontblamemepod/ 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

hey hey hey hello motherfuckers little fuckers big fuckers medium fuckers fuckers of all all shades of fuck fucky fuck you fuck off are you doing okay vowels fuck off I was trying. Fuck you. Fuck I. Fuck who. Fuck uh. And sometimes why.

Fuck ye. And sometimes fuck ye. Welcome back to Don't Blame Me, starring Melissa Diamond Mons. Who has been affirmed as the true diamond. I mean, I guess I'll introduce myself. My name is Megan Rinks. Hello. but we need to get back to you being the diamond.

Please share with the class what you did this past weekend. So on Friday, I went to the Queen's Ball. For those of you that don't watch Bridgerton, you may not be aware of what this is, but for promotion for the new season of Bridgerton and Shondaland and Netflix through this event that people could go to, and it was a fully immersive event.

so me and my cousin went we got dressed up you know party like it was the 1800s and we were in vip so we got to go in earlier than everyone else we go in and there's like this arch of flowers and cocktails but you know where i am on drinking cocktails and also people there that are very much in character that kind of guide you through the evening so we were first in the cocktail area then they made this big announcement and then they opened up another room and then in this other room there was easel set up where you took like digital pictures and then also a throne for the queen so we got our digital pictures taken and then the commoners started coming in which that fits with the time so the commoners started coming in and then they

made another announcement that the queen was coming so then well it wasn't the queen from the show but the person narrating the thing said the queen sent one of her closest something so then the woman comes in stunning the person that was playing the queen stunning then they like you're supposed to everyone's supposed to like take turns curtsying like they do on bridgerton so where she picks like introduction to who the diamond will be and so me and my cousin were just like we're not participating in this so we were just standing off to the side the line was long as hell but then one of the tenants came up to us and he was like hello um because they were talking in british accents and he said um would you like to meet the queen and we were like we're

good and he was like but you don't have to wait in this line you get to go first and we were like oh okay then so he takes us both he was very he was very good i wrote in my comments that they need to give him a raise but he took us by the arm and we went up and did our little curtsy for the queen and then they had like a little dance where they were teaching people to dance and then they opened up another room and it was this big ballroom where the video that i posted you saw like people dancing on the chandelier and stuff so they've got this big ballroom with this big dance floor and we like went to our seats and looked upon the commenters um and then there's like five or six queer very erotic i have to say choreographed dances where they were the story they were

telling was that they were fucking and they did some more choreographed dances with everyone participating and then they picked the diamond of the evening the season yeah the season well for that one was the evening because they had a couple other shows that they were doing but it's usually in the show it's diamond of the season but yeah that's cool and it was i mean it might have been me it was you it's just like it's as if they knew the podcast right and they knew your middle name like it just is like you couldn't have scripted this yeah that was great everyone needs to go check out your instagram to look at the photo they're so i immediately like yelped and i was like look at this like you look so good first of all you look like your whole

the genetics like i'm seeing every single one of your nieces and nephews in your face like your nieces and nephews could do show and tell day and be like i photoshopped this picture of me here like this is where i went like it's just like the genetics are so strong but you look so pretty like the dress the look everything like the whole vibe like it's just immaculate it's so good everyone go look i'm truly obsessed with it and i think that like you should be dressing like that every day now i'll join you like i was like this is such a vibe i loved it speaking of children looking like me i'm gonna show everyone that's watching do you see my here but our hair is the same and we have on the same color twin the genetics of your family are

so fucking strong it's so funny though because they all look just like their dads but also look like us you've shown me pictures of all of the the dads and the dads don't look like moms yeah like that's the it's not like everyone it's not like siblings are dating it's just it picks up But I also look like Megan and Melanie call me a shapeshifter because just depending on how I'm holding my face, I either look just like my mom or just like my dad. That's so crazy. Yeah, that's impeccable. I'm obsessed.

I just everyone go comment. Go look at the pictures. Go comment. Like go follow you. But like the photos are just so fucking good. Yeah. What's going on with you? Great question.

Just living life. Just living life. Fancy free. Fancy free. I did my um trial period knock on wood of going off my birth control pill for like three days as my doctor suggested to try and quote unquote bleed out my continuous spotting that I've had for seven months and I've been back on my birth control for like two days and I'm not bleeding at all so I don't know how long this is gonna last but going off that birth control for just a couple

days reminded me immediately got because I had the same as you I get hormonal like induced migraines so immediately just got the migraine and immediate like the bloating was back like everything was just back and so like as much as i still deal with like symptom endosymptoms like daily it was a reminder of how much worse it is without birth control yeah yeah i just that one day where it was too late for me to take mine and you know i had that migraine i commend you for doing three holidays because i can't even i mean i know at some point i'm going to need to go off of it but like that one day was a struggle i don't think that people who don't get migraines don't understand how debilitating like i was telling mods i was like i just need you to not talk but the lights

were off the blackout curtains were there and i was just like my eyelids hurt my ears hurt like every part of my head is like someone's tapping on it and there's bees buzzing and just there's everything and it was just so fucking rough and it's just so it's just so bad and like the fact that like hormones induce that and it's just like i will also say like i had been on a couple birth controls before that had made my migraines my hormonal migraines and just my migraines in general worse and when i talked to my new ob-gyn about like i want to get onto birth control this one didn't work for me because it made my migraines way worse and it was like she was like okay great so we're going to avoid the ingredient that usually does that is like that can do that is

this one so we're not going to do that we're going to do this this this and that and it's just so interesting to hear about like sometimes the same things that can cause more migraines in this one person that same exact pill will cause less migraines in another person because it's just how your body reacts because like everything has the same goal but everybody metabolizes it like differently and so I just thought it was just oh I never knew I'd never had a birth control that helped my migraines one made it worse one didn't make them any better or worse but this is the first one that has like just made it so much better and I am just so much happier so let's hope the not the bleeding we're gonna be solid because you know i have a bachelorette party to

attend and if i am bleeding constantly i literally don't fit me i was like if i don't fucking get this bleeding in check like i hope you know i am bringing around a fucking like bag full of dirty bloody period underwear with me on a boat trip like fucking everywhere we're going just like no so i can like switch them out like and she was like i mean i'm here for whatever you need to do but like i hope you saw i was like me fucking down i'll just be on a boat day with my fucking period i told her if she we have a fucking boat day i'm like i will disown you as a friend one i know that how much you hate boats so i was surprised when you were telling me that but then i was like sydney's your very best friend so you know sometimes you make sacrifices for

your friends and as cody from peloton wants to be his goal for the summers to be a hoe on a boat so you know i saw that if that's what you want then cool a hole in a boat with bloody underwear i saw a tiktok of this girl who was on a bachelorette party and she was just like being thrashed from side to side of the boat and it was just like barfing everywhere and i sent it to sydney and i go just now you can make the choice i just want you to be aware of the choice that you're making if you decide you need to get the medicine that helps oh i'll i do dramamine i do c-bands like i do all that shit no i mean like ask your doctor for the prescription that's the only thing that has ever worked for me i've needed zofran for years and i've been off of it i haven't

been on zofran since i had mono i haven't been on it since i was like 19 and i need to get back on it yeah especially post covid the amount of people who like have morning sickness and are pregnant who are like girl just take this over i'm like you're right you're right you're right you're right yeah this is an advice podcast where you call in you leave us voicemails and we give you wonderful life-changing absolutely amazing advice we give the advice that we'd like to see in the world we give advice like we would to our friends to each other and uh where the people you call who are gonna we're gonna give it to you straight sometimes when you reach out to your friends they tell you what you want to hear we're not going to tell you what you want to hear we're

going to tell you the absolute truth from unbiased perspective if you let us know you're sensitive we will keep that in mind if you want to call in leave us a voicemail at 310-694-0976 international listeners you can just send us an audio message at meganpodcast at gmail.com gotta keep it under three minutes or you'll be cut off we strongly force encourage suggest require that you write down what you are going to say. And then you practice it a few times, time it, see if it's under three minutes, make sure you have all the relevant information in there. The more relevant information we have, the better advice we can give you. So make sure you include the ages of everybody. It's all anonymous. Don't include the names. If you've been dating, how long you've been

dating, blah, blah, blah, all of the things that factor in that we need to factor in when giving you said advice. And then you can just read it when you record your call. And that will be the absolute best we promise we're not just saying it everyone who calls in if they don't do it then they regret it and then they call back and they read it and they're like i should have done this from the beginning and you have to be ancient or over have your parents permission let us know your pronouns if you want if you would like to and what else oh we record this for patreon like video versions if you want to go check that out it's only a dollar a month and you can see our facial reactions as we react to said calls we definitely are both very expressive we also have

live streams that we do twice a month if you want to check it out for our other patreon tier and you can support the show that way we're throwing it out there that we might do something else once a month on patreon so if you're interested let us know we've talked about it on this podcast i think and our other podcast well you guys will hear us talk about it on the other podcast oh yeah that comes out later this week yes we've been debating doing some like an additional kind of thing on there so let us know if you would like to see that let's read a review before we get into the episode so last week we read one from macklemore so i'll read the next one in mind this is titled love this i love listening to this podcast they are entertaining and hilarious yet informative

i share so many views with them and i feel comfortable as a black 17 year old girl to listen and ingest the things they talk about so sweet i can't believe 17 year old like how i know because like we've had 17 year olds in the past listen but now they're like 25 so it's cool that we're still reaching gen z to be in here yeah because i think i mean you know my belief that the generations are far too long but i i also i think that like how cool it would be like when people like tell us that they're like in high school listening to this or something something like i always i'm like damn if i had like two women talking about like masturbating and like sexual like a love bombing and toxic relation all of that kind of stuff like i would have felt very

equipped in like my relationships with myself and other people which i think is i think it's cool the podcast you wish to see in the world right but then also my niece oldest niece is 15 and i'm like don't ever listen to this well there's a personal aspect of that too that you're like yeah anytime someone i know is like oh my god i listen to this i'm like what i have quite a few friends that listen to this i have my cousin one of my cousins he started listening and he was like i heard some things i never want to hear about you i will never be listening to this again i said no one told you to and he said i was trying to be supportive that's so funny yeah anytime matz's mom likes like any of the instagram posts that are like you can't unsuck a dick i'm like oh

gosh i'm just like i appreciate the support but i'm very aware that you just often looked at this and you i think you double-tagged it and i think it was out of sheer support but now i'm just so aware? I've taken down like five TikToks that I've made because I remember that my younger nieces have TikTok and they very much follow me. And then they're like, why aren't you posting? I was like, well, I did post something, but I forget that the children are here. So I have to take it down. That's so funny. Okay. Well, we don't have an update for this episode. If you have an update that you want to give us and you've called in, we've given you advice before, send us an email, let us know we can try and organize and schedule it the problem is there's a lot of people that

want to give updates but they're working or in class at this time which we have talked about you know doing a day of just updates on a weekend but you're looking at houses now so that'll work for right now when i get a house then we will be able to do weekend updates but if you are someone who is able to give us an update and we record Tuesdays afternoon. If that's something you're possibly able to do, let us know. Anything else or should we hop in?

Let's hop in. Hey, y'all. So I'm a 20-year-old female, pronounced she, her, and I'm calling in because all throughout my life, my mom has been very involved with everything I do and all of my friends. I always told her everything.

In high school, all that ever entailed was my friend grandma and some boys, but never anything very serious. My parents have always been very strict and overprotective with them literally tracking my every move since moving away to college this last year by putting a tracking app on my phone, tracking my car,

and making me text them every time I leave my apartment, who I'm going with, where I'm going, and then back again when I arrive home, even though they live eight hours away, like they could do anything if something happened to me. Since I've gone to college, my mom expects me to call her every single day and continue to tell her everything about my life, But now that I've been having more experiences with boys, drugs, and partying, I don't feel

as comfortable talking to her about it. I've told her about the partying, and she doesn't really care about that, but whenever I talk about boys, she wants me to go into full, explicit detail of everything, and that just makes me uncomfortable to tell her, because I know she would judge me so hard, and she would hold my actions or mistakes against me in the future. Her rationale is that if I can't tell her about it, it's probably not something I should be doing. I lied about a lot of things last semester to try to go out and do what I want, but my lies ended up catching up with me, and they found out I was lying.

I tried to talk to her about taking a step back and taking a bit of distance from me to live my life away from my helicopter parents, but she wouldn't hear me out and said that because my parents are financially supporting me and they bought me a car that they're entitled to do as they please. I'm a first-generation college student and Mexican parent, and in our culture, it's not normal to move out of your house until you're married, which is what both of my parents did. So they don't understand how my experience compares to that of my peers and why I'd like more space and independence. What should I do, or how should I try to approach her about it again? I still love her and would not want her to be mad at me, but having them on my ass all the time is really stressful. Am I being an ungrateful little bitch, or is my stress warranted? by the way big fan of the podcast i'm the gemini and my mom is a leo thank you boy this is i mean i literally wrote down on here like lie and then you immediately like that's like

really right when you said like i lied and i caught up to me so like part of me is like let's unpack how it caught up to you lie better and like let's figure that out but you're living your very differently than your parents did. And so I can't imagine that kind of pressure. And then I also can't imagine that fear on what your parents have is something that is such a completely different concept to something that they did. And I think when we're afraid of something, we tend to squeeze too tightly and we can really hold on too tightly to things like that. But at the same time, unless you were told right off the bat, like, hey, we're buying you a car, the conditions that come along with this car is we're going to be tracking it.

like unless there was like you were informed through the whole process and you agreed along to that i think that's kind of where this really could have been of like avoided ahead of time is that it feels like there's a lot of expectations put on you that you didn't sign you didn't agree to or sign up for and that is really hard but i also understand for them if they're like well we want to be able to know where you are and we did buy you this car and we feel this is our right to do that. I don't agree with it, but I can understand how they feel about it. But are they going to take away your car? If you set up these boundaries, what are the consequences that you face with these boundaries? Are they going to stop paying for school? How much can

you exercise your own freedom and independence? And what are the consequences going to be? Because that I think is the biggest that's what's most important is like what happens when I went to college. I wouldn't say that my parents. This is more so my mom. They weren't strict, but my mom wanted to know what I was doing all the time, where I was going. And also she worked at the university, too. So that was an added extra layer. So this might not be the best advice, but this is what I did. and it worked out for me just fine was that I just rebelled against everything and just like said, fuck it and did whatever I wanted to do. And like maybe went a little bit extreme at some

parts and I still had, you know, good grades. So they couldn't say anything about that. But you know, when I was doing all these things and then just being very open about it and didn't hide anything and then they didn't, it went so far in the extreme that they didn't want to hear about it. So then they pulled back and then I'd say by the end of my freshman year, they didn't care anymore or they just didn't want to hear about it. So I scarred them. So that's what I did. Don't know if that's the best advice, because this is also with you. This is a cultural difference too. But if you want to use me as a role model and lead by example, I don't know the kind of punishment that they would give you too. And it's a thing of like when you're legally an adult,

but then you still have financial strings to your parents, then they can like use that against you. I mean, my parents had bought me a car, but what were they going to do? Drive me around. Like they want to come up here and drive me around. Couldn't do it. So what are you going to do? I think if it was me, I think the tracking thing, I think that there... Thank God that wasn't around when I was in school. I think it's just something along the lines of like, there is a difference between wanting to make sure that your kid is safe. And I think your parents are kind of putting everything under the same,

like that whole umbrella, which like, I totally understand the fear of like, you want to know when your kids are like coming and going and all that. But there's judgment attached to it. It's like not just about your safety. It's not just about like, oh, you're tracking your car. and we just want to make sure that like if there's an alert that like something is wrong and like most of the time with those i don't know what kind of tracking depending on it is but a lot

of the time if it's connected through like the actual car it can know if the car got into a collision and like they can check to make sure you're okay they can like call local hospitals like there's that aspect of it or if like no one can hear from you and like they have that so that you know safety wise but it sounds like it's that but they're using that as the excuse for a lot of the judgmental thing I think her saying like if you can't tell me about these like explicitly tell me these things you are doing with boys like then you shouldn't be doing them is firstly so false and incorrect where it's like mom do you want to tell me about like you deep-throating dad's cock then maybe you shouldn't be doing it if you don't feel comfortable talking to me

like it's just that's not realistic at all and that kind of hovering and need for like control and input on someone's life like that just causes you to be secretive and then not safe and that something that like i was secretive and therefore unsafe about things i did because i would have gotten in trouble and so i think that like i think honestly what was it like i think you are on the right track of being like okay you want me to be honest but if there is a part of you which i think is completely valid that will internalize any hateful things that they say i would not say what you're doing i would make something else up that you're doing but that's not like goody two shoes buttoned up that's not nothing like make up what you're doing and change the

story so it's not you don't feel like a personal judgment on the actions that you've done just pick like the same level that they would react to but it's just slightly it's just different yeah try and separate it from being about you and like your actual actions and then tire them out that way because imagine like does your mom want you to be like yeah so then i was having sex with this guy named jared here is his facebook i was writing his cock i would say like diameter wise like but like what do you want to know like because i think that maybe part of the thing that she might be doing is like instilling a fear in you of having to tell her so you won't do any of those things right but let's say you just do those things and then you do tell her i don't think she actually

wants that like i think she's just kind of operating on that i'm trying to scare you away. I'm trying to like scare you and deter you from doing this. Like this is an empty thing that I'm saying that I want you to come tell me all of this. I want you to have the fear so you don't actually do it. And then you actually do it. She might eat her own words. Yeah. And if not, I do think that like, if you can go see, talk to like a therapist, whether that's at school or not, just like kind of talk about boundary setting with people who you are financially dependent on. I think that a lot of the time when we talk about setting boundaries and stuff, and like I will explicitly say, like, I did not set those boundaries with people in my life until well after I could financially support myself. And so I think a lot of the time when we hear about that, it's from the perspective of people who have the luxury of being able to be really stern with their boundaries with people.

And that's sad. Like, I don't think boundaries should be a luxury, but they can be. So I think if you can talk to a therapist who can really give you specific insight into doing that when you're younger, I guess I also wonder what happens if you said before that you wanted you told her you wanted to take some space and distance because this was a lot for you. And she said, no. What happens if you would take that space? You know, because that's also, I think, a fair thing to do. But yeah, this is hard. this is like you're having to like essentially write a fanfic script of your life to like tell her you know this is something blah blah blah try things out see what works see what doesn't work

yeah i had a lot of fun rebelling oh yeah okay well best of luck that's fucking rough next one hello megan and melissa i am 20 years old i use he him pronouns i am calling today about some advice about a boy that i have recently met on a dating app we can call him alex he is 23 with he him pronouns we are both gay and both recently moved to the same bigger city being gay and finding someone around your age with similar values and morals and a mutual attraction can be really difficult so i have started to develop feelings for this person we have hung out almost every day we stay up all night we go out and practically do everything that would be leading up to sex With that, you have taught me that everything should be taken at face value.

It has been made very clear to me that Alex has recently gone out of a long-term relationship and isn't looking for anything serious. I totally get that and wouldn't want to be a rebound. He expresses that he loves being my friend and wants to continue to hang out. So, obviously, last night while we were hanging out, I told him that if we continue to be physical while we are together, I will develop feelings for him and that truthfully, I already have. He completely understood and wants to give me the space that I need. My only issue with the entire conversation was that he told me that if this had happened six months later, we could try this seriously.

He has the exact same feelings that I do for him, and he's just not ready. Truthfully, I felt like I was just being let on with that statement. I told him that that wasn't fair to say. I also told him that I don't usually make out, hold hands, and constantly shower my friends with sexual compliments. He apologized. We haven't spoken in a few days, and we have made it very clear that I will be the one to reach out if and when I want to. With all of that, I truly don't want to lose Alex as a friend. I can't imagine not being in contact with him.

Can I realistically hang out with him as a friend and remove all sexual activity? How long should I wait to reach out, or should I just completely give up and move on? Thank you guys so much. Love the podcast. Okay, bye. Bye. i i i'm ah i feel like we've all been in that i just oh i feel i would be so we're in this with you like i'm so annoyed for you

my advice is so toxic i'll start okay good so here's my advice you like him you've made that obvious that you like him but there was one thing that you said it was like in the area that you're in, it's hard to find somebody with the same values around the same age as you. And so it feels like that maybe you like him because he's there and a proximity because he's the only other person that's there that fits those criteria that you want in a partner. And so I know you said you can't imagine your life without him or him being a part of your life. Again, I think that's because he's there. And if you cut him out, then you'll realize how much, especially because no one can put a timeline on when they'll get feelings for someone. So that's just a bullshit cop out. And I

think that you want to get over him, like liking him in that kind of way. And I think the only way you can do that is if you cut off contact with him. And I think once you cut off contact, you'll realize that he was never that great to begin with it was just that because he was there i think that's great advice i think that you have never been friends yeah and it's not just a matter of like you've had feelings it's like you're holding hands like you're giving sexual compliments like the whole thing has been leading up to something that he has said from the beginning like i again like yes take things at face value but that's not on you to hear what he's saying and taking it at face value it's impossible for like there's of course you've developed feelings like his words

are not matching his actions but the result of that is like i just explicitly you've never been friends because like your friendship has been based on a flirtationship like that's what it's been like that's how you've built this whole thing and so i understand you like wanting to remain friends but you don't know how to be friends and you haven't been friends with him and so i think you have two options one option one is this is the end of what this has been and so that's either like you're gonna have to be okay with the fact that like are you able to remain friends and know that like he's gonna go and date someone else like are you gonna be cool hanging out with like his significant other like are you gonna be cool introducing someone that

you date like how are you gonna feel hearing about when he goes out with people because if you're setting boundaries with your friends that like i don't want to hear about the people that you're going out and dating that's setting a boundary that you do with like an ex or and someone you probably shouldn't be friends with if they're an ex because there's clearly feelings still there so like you have to then just become friend friends and that means like those relationship or like boundaries that involve things that are more than friendship they can't really be there or you don't remain friends quote unquote or like don't start a friendship and you just like fully walk away exactly like melissa's saying and you realize that like okay this might

have been a proximity thing and like this felt too good to be true and it's because it you know this was a crash and it wasn't a friendship and you're gonna meet other people or sounds so bad i think whatever way you cut it you're gonna end there's a large percentage chance that you end up like having your heart broken because like you really like have feelings for him currently and currently nothing's going to like explicitly change that or you remain friends with him and you see if he's right on his word at six months and that's just delaying putting that potential inevitable heartbreak off for x amount of time that is a line because you're right like no when you say you don't know how you're going to feel in six months like you don't know what that's going

to be like and he's also freshly out of a relationship too yeah i think if you have remained if you decide to remain friends and in his life whether or not you're consciously doing it i think you're going to be waiting for those that six months like event to arrive i'm not going to judge you if you decide you want to do that like sometimes like we sometimes like we need other people to hurt our feelings and we don't want to do it ourselves like sometimes i would rather hurt my own feelings and anticipate it and pull myself out of it and just be like, okay, I'm going to walk away from the situation. I'm going to take the onus on that because I would rather hurt my feelings and have somebody else hurt my feelings. Like sometimes I want

someone else to hurt my feelings and I want to hold out hope. I want to not necessarily be rational. I don't, I want to just kind of, I want that 1% chance and I'm ready and anticipating hating that it might not go well and i think that like both of those things are fine and fine options and they're options that we we and choices that we've all made at some point in our life and i think it's just a matter of what one can you live with what pain what heartbreak can you live with can you live with the heartbreak right now and walking away now or would you rather live with it in six months so i think only you know that answer but as much as like you can say that you're like oh i i really prescribe to your mentality of like taking what people say at

face value and as somebody who does that like that it's a really it's a strong conviction and mentality that i have but that doesn't mean that i always listen to it that doesn't mean that sometimes i don't just be like but on the off chance i'm gonna hold out and do blah blah blah and I sometimes regret it but it's just what's your toxic advice no that's my toxic advice is waiting out I don't even think that's toxic I think it's sometimes like you said sometimes people need to have their feelings hurt by somebody else or you're just that optimistic and then people show their true colors and you realize you have to learn lessons from things to be able to move on yeah and as much as like we sit here and we give advice we talk about this and I say things

that I take people I take what people say at face value that is my brain and not to be cheesy but like sometimes the heart wins sometimes the fucking vagina wins like sometimes like I can rationally think something but that doesn't mean that I'm going to act with my rational thoughts yeah and we can try and like avoid hurt and pain as much as possible but this is one of the situations where it's gonna it's gonna come it just a matter at what form it's gonna come and what timeline and that is that choice of yours to make but you can also always dip out and like try being friends quote-unquote friends for what it is but you can also try remaining friends the same way physically that you are now and wonder if in six months it's just going to

change into a relationship but you just have to know your own feelings and what the threshold that you can handle of that is because you're the only one who it sounds fucked up but in truly you are the only one who's ever going to care about your who's going to care about your feelings as much as you do no one else is ever going to care as much as you and that's universal all of us yeah but fuck i would be so annoyed if i was you i hate when people say this shit i had met you six months later and you're like you fucker yeah all right we're into your break we will be back and we're back from our break whoa what a great break did you have a good time your eyes are creepy i didn't even blink during the break oh no she didn't she never blinks she just immerses

herself into amniotic fluid and then arises that's why she needs eye drops all the time she never blinks okay on to the next hi melissa and megan i decided to switch it up i love both of the podcast and everything you guys do so much. My dilemma today involves me, she, her pronouns, my boyfriend, he, him pronouns, and our longtime best friend, he, him pronouns. I'm going to call him guy friend from here now because I can't think of anything else that I would say. Everyone in this story is 21 or 22. I'm working and the two other guys are still in college. We've all known each other for a long time. My guy friend and I are family friends for about 12 years. My boyfriend

have known him for eight years, and then my boyfriend and I met five years ago and started dating three years ago. We all swam together all throughout high school, so we spent every day together, and we're very close. Since we went to college, my boyfriend and I have remained close to our guy friend independently through our own relationships with him and through group friendships. Sometimes we don't talk for a while, but usually we send text messages in our group chat, and even when we don't talk for a while, we pick up where we left off. About six to nine months ago, I felt this guy friend pull away from me. I brought it up to my boyfriend. He noticed the same thing, but we didn't mention it again to each other. Yesterday, my boyfriend told

me that he's reached out to our guy friend twice in the past month and one more time this past week with no response from him. He was obviously upset about this and felt sad. I texted our guy friend yesterday and he responded within a couple hours. We exchanged a couple messages catching up about life, but I felt weird about it not knowing if I should tell my boyfriend. So my question now how do I move forward? I don't know if I should tell my boyfriend because I know he's sad and feeling rejected by this situation. I also feel awkward to keep talking to this guy friend without knowing what's going on with him and my boyfriend. So do I continue this friendship with the guy friend and act like nothing's up? Do I ask about my boyfriend? For some additional info, this guy

friend has had two girlfriends in the time he's been in college and is currently in a relationship. I've genuinely never thought that he was into me and we have a real actual brother-sister-like relationship since we've literally known each other for most of our lives. I really think my boyfriend should just send him one more text and be like, what's going on with us? Because personally, that's just what I would do. I'm a little more confrontational than he is. I think he's not going to want to do that because he already feels rejected and doesn't want that solidified. Should I propose this idea to him? Please help. Thank you guys so much. I really, really love you. I hope you're having a great day. Bye. Am I crazy for thinking this feels

very simple I think it feels very simple too but I don't know if our simplicities are the same what's yours mine is okay so your friend you've known him most of your life which I feel like you need to tell your boyfriend because I don't think you should be lying or withhold withholding information from your boyfriend because that just sets up a bad trend for later like you're okay with keeping other relationships away from the other or lying to the other or not telling the whole truth. So I think you need to tell, depending on how important this relationship is

with your boyfriend. So someone you see yourself spending the rest of your life with, or is this someone that you're like, eh, I'll break up with them in a couple months. How important is your relationship with your boyfriend? And I think you need to tell him that you've been in contact with your friend

and if either one i feel like the friend also should expect you to tell your boyfriend too and if either one of them have an issue with this or both of them have an issue i don't feel like that these are people that you need in your life when they're not comfortable with the other relationships in your life yeah i think that's fair mine is slightly different okay mine is like automatically i would have been like to and i would do it now but i would like with with your friend i would have been like hey i don't know if you i would kind of play dumb like i don't know if you like had like missed it or didn't see like so your boyfriend's name is like jason jason did like he just told me that like he had like tried to text you a couple times and like he didn't get

a response like i obviously like was gonna tell him that like we had talked but i wasn't sure if there was like something up like between you two like I don't want to obviously get in the middle of like anything like that but I just I'm gonna let you know like I'm gonna tell him we talked and like you should know that like he really misses you and like he really wants to talk to you and like the same way that like I'm totally okay that we have kind of drifted apart and haven't talked in a while like we talk again it's like no time has passed I hope you know that like he will he feels the same way like if there's something like you should just reach out to him Like he just wants to be friends with you again.

I think that as much as you have a friendship with him, you don't know their friendship. And so getting in the middle of their friendship, I think the only thing that you can really do is be like, hey, I'm going to tell him that we texted, but you should know not as your friend and not as his friend, but as his girlfriend, like he would just love to hear from you. Like he totally misses you. He would like love to hear from you. You obviously don't have to listen to what I'm saying.

like but I just feel like you you should like and sometimes that kind of that works and I will say I had this not some not totally similar but I had a friend who kind of like went off the grid ghosted and hadn't responded to my text in a while and I wasn't like upset I was just kind of like oh I miss you like you're probably going through something and like we haven't talked in a while and like that's really okay I'm definitely a friend that you feel an obligation not everyone but this friend specifically you feel an obligation to be really honest with me and like you know that i'm gonna be really honest with you about things and usually when you pull away it's because you're sometimes not doing things that you don't necessarily stand by and you this friend was

still talking to another one of our mutual friends and i was kind of it didn't i was like that's fine and this friend ended up seeing mots and mots immediately was like hey so good to see you heads up megan would love to hear from you like just now that like i know you guys haven't been talking for a while I know that like this isn't an attack at all like you haven't responded to the last couple of her messages like I don't know if you think that like she would be mad at you she's not mad at you she would just love to hear from you and immediately that friend texted me and was like I'm so sorry it felt like too much time had passed and I felt like you would have been upset with me for not responding and then I felt bad and like things have just been this has

been like this this and this has been going on and I'm like great like whenever like I'm always around we can always pick up where we left off there's like no pressure there at all and like i'm really i'm sorry that you felt like that and like now we can have a conversation where i can tell you that like i don't expect anything of you at all like just expect you to care about me the same way i care about you and i don't i don't quantify that in anything other than just the interactions we do have with each other like that's it like don't worry no expectations here love you great and i think that we don't have those conversations with like friends enough and i think that we can have feeling like a obligation to people and it's not anyone it's

not your responsibility to kind of facilitate that the same way it wasn't matz's responsibility to facilitate that but i think if you are feeling a obligation to both parties i think that's the way that you do it because you can't mitigate or control how either of them responds to it. Like your boyfriend might get his feelings hurt no matter what. The friend might feel betrayed that you told your boyfriend that you were talking no matter what. But the only thing that like you can do is what you would want, how you would want it to operate for you. So for you, if you in that situation would want a friend, like your boyfriend to be like, Hey, she would love to hear from you, blah blah blah but i think that's the most you can do while still honoring honesty with both

parties like i think you should tell the friend i'm gonna tell him but i want to give you a heads up and like let you know that like you should reach out and i'm that i'm gonna tell my boy and i'm but i'm not and like not telling your boyfriend in a way that's like dramatic where it's like hey by the way i just wanted to let you know that like i did tag texted him the other day and um he did respond so he's all good i don't know what's up but like i think you should reach out again like yeah that's good yeah i think this stuff can be hard and again you don't know the intricacies of their friendship and he might feel like he owes your boyfriend more than he's been able to he might feel like he's been under delivering on friendship and might feel like it's too you know

i mean when like too much time has passed or something yeah and especially if you two have more of like a brother sister relationship it might be easier for him to reach out to you and then he might think of you more as a facilitator between the two anyway because he was like i feel more comfortable because she's my sister and then my sister can tell her boyfriend yeah yeah but i think you're right i didn't even think about the fact that like you're so spot on with of course he would assume that you would tell your boyfriend like that's just unless he told you not to tell him like it does feel like that is probably an intentional facilitation of that there it's an awkward position to be in very much so but just when you talk to your boyfriend about

it just try not to have it be like well i texted him and he responded to me because like that could hurt his feelings yeah and it might all right next call yay hi megan and melissa um i'm a long time listener, and I've actually called him before. Something has come up in my life recently that I thought you two might have some thoughts on. My pronouns are she, her, and the individual that I'm going to reference uses they, them pronouns. My sister-in-law recently came out as non-binary, and her parents, my in-laws, are not particularly supportive of that, and that's been a real struggle in their life my sister-in-law is married to a cis heterosexual male and he is very supportive of them and all of that has been going really well recently they told me

my sister-in-law told me that they've been speaking to their counselor about a possible diagnoses. They've had several diagnoses in the past of different personality disorders, that kind of thing. They've struggled with mental health since they were young. And honestly, coming out with non-binary has been a huge plus for them in their body image struggle, their recovery from an eating disorder. The issue that I have is that their counselor is not licensed to make any diagnoses. And the only reason I know this is because I'm getting my clinical counseling license, and I looked up their particular state to make sure that I wasn't wrong about this. Their counselor has been telling them that they have dissociative

identity disorder, which is a very real and valid diagnosis, and that might be true, but also their counselor doesn't have the licensure to diagnose them. I'm concerned about my sister-in-law because her counselor has been doing this for quite some time, and I'm kind of worried that the counselor is taking advantage of them. It's been a couple of years since they've started with this counselor. And when they talk about their session, it's often the counselor sharing a lot of personal information, almost treating my sister-in-law as though they are the therapist rather than the client. And as a counseling student, I feel like that's very inappropriate i don't know if i should say something and i would love some input so thank

you bye-bye so from my experience in california therapists can suggest things but and if they're seeing you from like a talk therapy perspective they can say i've got a lot of insight like you would have to do a diagnostic like your your therapist might have the credentials to diagnose you but as far as i know it would be like we would need to do a diagnostic session and we would need to go through said criteria and do that and that would be the goal of going through this but a lot of the time it's psychology psychiatry who's doing explicit diagnosis but depending on your credentials and what you are advertising and what state you're into also yeah i don't mean this in a way explicitly towards you the caller but i will say that there's the wonderful thing about

being a student is you are fresh in the education process which means that the materials that you are researching are usually much more up to date than the people who have already gone through this process and have been licensed and are currently working they don't they can elect in most fields in general you can elect to continue your education and to constantly update and like read up on like new things but a lot of the time like there are a lot of like very fucking dated therapists and mental health professionals psychologists who are going off of shit they learned in the 80s but they're also there also comes a very big ego with psychology students and people working in people studying anything in general med students like anywhere like there comes a very large ego

that sometimes can really ethically get in the way and I don't mess I'm not saying that that's what you're doing but as a student I don't think it was appropriate for you to look up your sister in-laws counselors information i just i don't because you are not peers with that counselor and i think that it is very fair that other counselors should check other counselors that we need to self-police within every department or any profession or anything like that but when you come at it from a place where you're not there it feels like taking advantage of something that you haven't finished going through and using that and I would feel pretty insulted if I was your sister-in-law because they're a person and they're a person in your life that you wouldn't

know it you wouldn't have access to these records if you weren't doing this for school and it just feels a little bit icky and I think that's what you're feeling right now because you're like do I tell them that I found this information because I think you know that like this was something that you probably shouldn't have looked up because I do agree that a therapist, you can have any sort of feelings about this and you can feel like it's taking advantage of your sister-in-law. But I think that the way that you do that is you lead by example and you talk about things that you learned in class and you talk about things and you don't talk about it as it pertains to specifically your sister-in-law and their relationship with their therapist and their

therapist like because then I also think you're kind of taking advantage of your personal relationship with your sister-in-law and then you are also not in their sessions and then you're also taking advantage of your access as a student and I don't think that you have much of a leg to stand on for saying you feel like your therapist is taking you feel like their therapist is taking advantage of them because I I think no matter your good intentions I also kind of think you are you know but i think the advice is sometimes mental health professionals fuck up sometimes they fuck up the first psychologist i went to was vastly inappropriate but also like was misdiagnosing with things like left and right and it's kind it's something that happens and i as a

patient was like i don't like this this doesn't sit right with me i don't feel comfy about this but if this has been helpful for your sister-in-law and they really value this relationship and this hasn't been making their life worse i think that the only thing you can do again is like lead by example and if you have these open conversations let them talk and be like oh i i'm not invalidating potential diagnoses that they may or may not have but just talking about therapists like if you know that the therapist unloads their own personal life i just saying things like i don't want to come across as judgmental but i hope you know that that's really not how like they're supposed to operate there's like a level of that and then just having

it be like at point blank just that information and then but there's not much you can you can do that doesn't that you're just going off of your your gut which like i'm not saying is wrong i'm just saying it's a really hard thing to prove without hurting people yeah i had a therapist that was licensed and they gave me too much of their personal information. So this can happen with licensed or unlicensed people. I think you made a misstep when your sister-in-law told you that their therapist was giving personal information. I think you should have asked them why or like let them know that that typically isn't appropriate behavior and ask them if they were uncomfortable with it and then told them to, you know, look into them to see if they're

licensed or whatever. You should have never looked this person up ever. Like you shouldn't know the professional information of someone that's personally in your life, their therapist information, because that, and especially you as someone that's a student of this, that is a boundary that you should not have crossed because that to me is unethical. Yeah, I agree. And I know it came from a place of love, but you, as someone who is studying this, took the information that you had and then took advantage of the situation.

Yeah. I will also say that I think you're right. I think the question you should have asked, and you can still bring it up, and it's, so the therapist is sharing a lot about their life. How does that make you feel? Does that work for you? I will say. There are some people that that does work for. my therapist was that so very much since the beginning was very much like i don't really

share too much about like my life at all but i really will go based off of like patients and stuff and the first time she ever she asked she was like i really relate to what you're saying would it be helpful for you if i could tell you why i relate to this and i was like please that would be so helpful and we had that conversation and it was a very quick thing and the reason why she said it was because she was like, I thought as a professional, I thought this might be something that might be helpful for you. You're very much into intellectualizing things. And sometimes it's hard for you. You're really great at acknowledging and validating other people's feelings. You're not good with doing that for yourself. So I thought it might be helpful for you to know that I had

been through something incredibly similar and that you would feel for me in a way that I need you to feel for you and I was like you're a genius like that was great like and it was amazing and she said she was like you know more about like I don't I've never shared with any of my clients like you know more I wouldn't do that with anyone so that's something that you need to ask if it would be helpful if what the therapist is doing is helpful or not or if it's something that they like but I think that you are merging personal and professional and you're also not to be an asshole you're not a professional right now you're studying but like melissa said ethically i do think that this is ethically questionable and as a friend if this if it was just a friend and i was

sharing things about my therapist and they looked into my thing i would feel so wildly betrayed and like really really hurt and it would feel really unprofessional i would also feel a little concerned about that person's professional life moving forward because it doesn't feel like feels like a lot of lines have been crossed and there is boundaries and confidentiality within friendships and within families and within just relationships and personal relationships that we're talking like and that is something that we need to honor always and talking about your experience in therapy or your experience with like mental health and that is hard enough to do with a professional And I think sometimes it's even harder to do with family members and friends.

And if you're concerned about their therapist, you need to be a safe place. I think if you tell them that this is what you looked up, I think you're removing yourself from being a safe place. So there's a way to ask questions and just listen. And if this door has been open for them to communicate this stuff with you, then if something doesn't fit something feels uncomfortable or something doesn't go right your sister-in-law will be able to tell you because you are a safe person but you don't need to do that for them because that also feels patronizing yeah you know there's a very fine line between being like i feel

like this person's being taken advantage of and infantilizing and being patronizing to said person that there's someone who it does feel like a judgment on someone's mental clarity or mental well-being that they would be someone who would be taken advantage of so my apologies i'm waiting for all the psych students to be so got a lot of them listening then we have actual therapists listening so any therapist that's listening please call them for don't blame them and let us know your thoughts but the difference on the facebook group on anything my dms in general the difference between how people studying psychology and people studying to be therapists the difference between what they say and what licensed professional counselors and therapists say to me and on face

our facebook group every night and fucking day night and fucking day that's what when i said therapists i don't mean students i mean actual licensed therapists please let us know it's remarkable all right time for don't blame them okay so this is where a listener will call in with their own advice based on a previous call on a previous episode so maybe they've been to something similar this is exactly what we want therapists to call in for so we can play this pertaining to the last call but uh yeah hi i'm calling in for don't blame them on your most recent episode episode 15 about the girl whose boyfriend broke up with her on the phone from the street yeah that one i just heard i

really good advice. I recently just went through a breakup as well. And me and my ex worked together for four and a half years. And we had broken up as well recently. So a lot of things that she's saying kind of resonates with me, but I have completely gone over him. So I feel like I maybe get some advice to her. One thing that helped me a lot is just anytime I wanted to call my ex, I would immediately call either my dad, my best friend, my grandma, anyone who I know I could just vent to and cry to literally like they don't have to say anything I would just cry to them it would fill that void of me being lonely because what I realized is that me missing him was me being lonely and like not being able to talk to someone talk to someone 24 hours a day and like

have that friend in that way but it's so great once you get to like get out of that state of mind because you have friends that are going to want to do that you can literally fall in love with yourself date yourself and that's fun as well like you have to know yourself so well another thing that if you ever like think about missing him like I always tell myself like what are you missing someone who breaks up with you over the phone across the street someone who doesn't have enough respect for you to break up with you in person you're missing someone that you don't even have like a sexual desire for like these are things you have to remind yourself of because it's so easy for your brain to like fall back into like these ways of like thinking like

wow like you're romanticizing this idea of him and like he's not that obviously like with men you kind of have to take what they say and what they do for face value because men aren't like women men are very straightforward and if they want to do something they will and if they don't they won't so he's obviously not making an effort so I think just take that as face value and yeah you do deserve better your friends are right like especially your friends don't like him girl you can get better I'm sorry well I hope this helps a little bit I'm sorry about your breakup and just know that it passes with time and like it's like a grieving process you go through anger you go through sadness you'll get over it and you'll go back around so just take it day by day I never

thought when they said like like that's something how men are which I'm not disagreeing with I think it's like a vast generalization but it made me think of like oh wait this is the patriarchy striking again where women can't explicitly feel like they can just say what they want say what they mean right off the bat it feels like we have to dance around other people's emotions we have to gauge other people's reactions to see if it's a safe environment for us to say how we actually feel it's all of this kind of dance that like maybe maybe stereotypically men are more blunt because they've been allowed to be and that also it goes from like the boardroom work email etiquette to relationships that was like an aha moment for me wow I want to ask you something I

don't know if it's right or not is it man and woman or feminine and masculine so I was thinking about that exact same way and so something that like I mean homophobia is the result of also the patriarchy and it's the vilification of femininity and that gay men homophobia believes that gay men are inherently feminine and feminine is bad and so i do think it completely depends because feminine and masculine energy is like not as much as you know fox news would have believed that you're born with right like it's it's your genitalia like it is it is an influx in every single person like we all have that and so I think that it is feminine energy in men but I think even a woman who has masculine energy I think if you're I think if you're female presenting I think that

it probably would affect this I think it would probably be I think if you're female presenting with masculine energy I think it would still probably be the same because I don't think it's the same for me that's what i'm asking yeah i think that my interpretation as a woman would it's just going to be different than like how a cis man is going to perceive women with whatever and i don't know how much they're about like what their insight is onto the energy of that or if it is purely based on what someone looks like like i don't know if like cis straight men respect more masculine women more than feminine women i don't know dude the patriarchy fucking does not take a day off i know because you know i am a woman i present as female i

am feminine but like in my communication i have more masculine according to what this person's saying i communicate more like a man do you feel like you've always been like that or do you feel like you have have you do you feel like you've been more I don't want to say you've always been like that but have you always felt comfortable doing that in spaces or do you feel like you've gotten more comfortable doing that as an adult or do you feel like you read each individual instance do you mean what I'm saying I think that I've become more confident as an adult but when I was younger I was much more timid yeah I agree with that whole I I personally agree with that wholeheartedly like I definitely both of us are that's why we get along so well like both very

straightforward very blunt like not sugarcoating all that but I definitely think that that has always been what I wanted to do but I didn't feel comfortable doing that until I got older I didn't feel comfortable in every I didn't feel comfortable doing that universally in every space until I got older and still now I have to like be like it's okay you can do it like so yeah I don't know it's that's something that I do wonder too when it comes to like because we're born into the patriarchy I sometimes I wonder I'm like what are personality traits that are mine and what are me rebelling against this and what has been influenced by this and I will never know and I don't think anyone knows because the different things that we experience determine

who we become and how we react to something today is different it could be different from how we reacted to it last year because of our lived experience. And then as we mature and grow older, I don't mean mature as like mentally, I just mean physically grow older and go through more things, how you react to it in the future could be completely different. I mean, there's been even like with this podcast, things that we've given advice on in the past, we've matured gone through different things and you know there was a point when someone was like they said this here and it's like well we had a change in opinions there's not people their experiences change how they view things yeah I'm I'm so glad that like if we had done this podcast with it if

I hadn't changed and learned because the thing with changing changing requires learning and education on from our side of it like and if I if neither of us changed any of our opinions or our thoughts in the last like five plus years like that means we wouldn't have learned anything and we haven't grown at all like yeah even old tweets that I've said like certain things that I'm just like you know there's ignorance and then there's also just be there's there's there's you can choose ignorant there's there's active ignorance and there's passive ignorance and like when i've been passively ignorant around about something like the goal is to never remain there like i never want to remain that that just means i'm living in a bubble and i'm not reading

things i'm not seeing things from different perspectives like i would never i don't want to choose to be ignorant if my ignorance comes from like my lack of diversity in my surroundings or like things that i'm reading and i'm not being proactive enough that's like on me to change that but if i don't change that that's also an active choice right and like not what i ever i ever want to have so it's it's fascinating yeah it is very very fat when i learned about the the tie of the patriarchy towards homophobia and like the femininity of that that was like a wildly interesting thing and that was i also just saw this video of someone talking about why that there's so much pressure put on gay men with friendships with straight women because straight

women see them as safe men and they desperately want to see good in men but they they want to feel safe and so then they have this like fetishization of gay men of like being the bff and then this man was talking about how he feels like a pressure to be friends with straight women because he knows he is a safe man for them and a lot of the times like people don't have that and that it feels like a lot of pressure to like live up to like the stereotype but then also to be a vessel for whatever that women are going through and needing and needing to feel like they can trust a singular man and the pressure of that and i was like that is so interesting life man fucking life yeah well that is it for our episode we hope you all enjoy if you want to

call in again the phone number is 310-694-0976 international listeners you can send us an audio message at meganpodcast at gmail.com go leave a review on the podcast app we would appreciate it we love reading your reviews makes us happy and if you are listening this long go comment on the instagram the last instagram post and comment on there if you think that caller number three should tell their boyfriend or not tell their boyfriend and or comment the last movie you watched and which one we should watch because i desperately need some new content let us know anything you want to promote follow my personal instagram please you could also follow my personal instagram i appreciate it buy my book buy my podcast buy your podcast buy my book buy my

presets and patreon yeah and make sure you're subscribed to this podcast but then also our other podcast but am i wrong which comes out on thursdays and you can listen to us this week again so if you join our join our patreon you can also live stream with us and every other week you can join us three times and then if you also if we decide to do this new podcast that's four times so you almost have us every weekday almost almost a whole work week and uh we're here for you so don't worry we'll just keep infiltrating even more even more we'll see you next time goodbye 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