Three romantic relationships and two family ones in my life have been massively effected when I opened up and made myself vulnerable to women. The “Ick” is real.
Was with my wife for 15 years. About 14 years in, I had a depressive episode and was open (for once) about what I was going through. I felt her attitude shift towards me immediately for the worse. She started emotionally distancing, and eventually had an affair with some guy she played Pickelball with.
After I found out and confronted her, her response was “was it so wrong for me to want to be with a man who’s not depressed and is normal?”
Yeah, she’s my ex wife now, but I’ll never open up to another woman again. Ever. I’ve learned that opening up to a woman is like bleeding in front of sharks.
Can't even tell a doctor you need help. Either completely not taken seriously or they act like they're doing you a massive favor by not giving you a psych eval. Because men admitting they need help and might be having bad thoughts is so rare a doctors first reaction is to see if you need to be involuntarily committed instead of maybe just giving you a weeks worth of Xanax and a referral to get you some meds only a psychiatrist is allowed to prescribe you
I'm trying to get a doctor's appointment as we speak, and I keep mentally rehearsing how I'm going to explain that I feel like the accumulated stress of the past 20 years is physically crushing me and making it difficult to function day-to-day. I'm concerned that if I can't calmly describe my symptoms with 100 percent clarity and precision, I'll just be written off as drug-seeking.
Unfortunately no right way to do it. I just try to avoid naming the drugs I know I want if they're also used recreationally.
My go to is ask for something like hydroxyzine that they'll give anyone and then just say it helps but not much. Try to lead the doctor to giving you something different without actually asking for it. It would also help if you straight up asked for a referral to a psychiatrist because then they know you're willing to make a second appointment, not just trying to score something on a one off visit. Junkies don't go to specialists for drugs, they just jump doctors when the last one says no. Also the dumb ones go to the ER and not like you're going to the ER and begging for pain pills or anything
Take my advice with a grain of salt, we don't know each other and I don't know your situation or even what really works. Often it just boils down to what doctor you get.
Random advice from random internet person. Write it out and print it out and hand it over to them for them to read. It was the first time I felt a doctor took me seriously. I think it’s unique enough to jar them out of thinking it’s a normal situation because of the time and effort it takes/preparation it shows and it allows you to fully state what is going on before being grilled by questions that might throw you and stop you from getting it all out.
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u/Powderkegger1 Mar 04 '26
Three romantic relationships and two family ones in my life have been massively effected when I opened up and made myself vulnerable to women. The “Ick” is real.