I haven't found that to be true yet....
Keyword - YET.
London regularly pisses me off on my posts & other people's...
I just haven't said anything to piss YOU off - YET. Other people think my posts are just as bad if not worse than london's. The difference between me and london, however, which could be the reason I actually have made some friends here, is that I can take it as well as I can dish it out, and london can do one of those things well and the other not at all.
so it's not like I'm overly sensitive with my own issues.
You say so, but I don't know you. So I'll just read your posts and decide whether or not they are in accord with this statement.
I'm in grad school to become a psychologist so I look for constructive ways to help people.
You should know that london claims, as do I, to be on the Asperger's spectrum. What does that mean to you as a graduate student studying to become a psychologist who wants to "help" people?
I'm honest to a fault, but I always temper my honesty with compassion for the other person & try to find a way to make sure my advice will be heard
I appreciate that sentiment, but I do not share it (all the time). I don't have the time to get into it right now, and this is not the right thread to do so, but there is more than one way of doing that, and my feeling is that "making sure my advice will be heard" is not possible. People will hear your advice or they won't. I've had people PM me or come back later and say that they didn't like my advice because of the "way" i wrote it, but that I was RIGHT and they appreciate it after all. True, there are probably fewer of those than the "OMG THANK YOU's" that someone like Gala Girl receives, but quality over quantity and I'm not collecting trophies or letters of recommendation from people. We're all here for free; we are not here to pretend we're great therapists (I'm sorry - some of us ARE. I should qualify my "we's).
You can say "ass" in all of its forms on here.
tough love approach is about the person giving the advice & their baggage, not about what's best for the recipient of the advice & I'm sick of it. There's a way to be honest & candid without being a jerk. Yeah yeah, I've heard there's different versions of compassion & I just don't buy it, compassion is compassion. There's tough advice to hear tempered with love & then there's I'm a just a jerk pretending my advice is tough love. It's harmful & it certainly isn't helpful.
When you start your own psychotherapy practice and have people paying you to tell them what you think they need to hear, then you will be in control of all that. Until then, you will have to figure out a way to cope with the fact that not everyone is like you and you don't have to "buy it". I have a very deliberate way of communicating in writing which does tend to rub people the wrong way, but that does not mean I'm projecting my "baggage" onto other people.
All these tough lovers need to start getting tough with themselves & leave the rest of us alone.
If "the rest of us" want to be left alone, go be alone.
You cannot even BEGIN to know how "tough with themselves" other people are. I can't speak for anyone else, but I am tougher on myself than I am on all of the people on this forum combined. Why? Because I have to LIVE with myself. I don't have to live in any of the fucked-up situations I read about on here because I did not CREATE those fucked-up situations. I create my OWN fucked-up situations, and i DEAL with them, and if I ask for advice and I don't like it, I figure the other people just don't get it, and I don't lecture THEM about the WAY they gave their (free) advice.
You know, the thing about free advice, is that you don't get your money back. When you grow up and get a job, and people come to you and pay for your advice, and they don't like it, or it doesn't help or makes things worse when they try to follow it, will you give them a refund? I am just wondering about that.
Having said all that, I agree with london's last post, the one you took issue with. I don't think it was harsh or bad at all, it just rephrases back to you what YOU said, but from an outsider's perspective. I found it to be virtually devoid of judgement; more like what therapists actually are SUPPOSED to do, which is to say things back to the client in a non-emotional, pragmatic way. Many clients don't enjoy that, and become angry AT their therapists or counselors. That doesn't mean the counselor is "doing it wrong". It means they are trying to get you to disengage momentarily and see things objectively.
You DID go into this knowing there was a possibility of a veto by the wife.
You DO appear to be letting the guy off the hook as if he had no choice in the matter.
I think you've kind of absolved your former partner of any accountability here. He agreed to a veto. He made the choice. He choose not to limit the emotional availability in his relationships even though he knew they could be terminated by his wife. You chose to become significantly entwined with someone with a veto. She had her issues with polyamory for sure, but everyone else made choices that led to this point too.
All london has done is re-cap and summarize what YOU told us. I fail to see how anything in there is "salt in the wound". What you have done here is essentially the same as taking an apartment located above a nightclub and then complaining that you never get any sleep because of the loud music. Then you go and blame the club patrons because if it weren't for them, there wouldn't be a nightclub below your apartment.
So if you weren't pissed off with me before, are you pissed off at me NOW?