Two great blogs on difficult relationships

[Rebel13]

I've been sharing both these blogs in responses to threads, so I thought I would put them here for easy reference and give a little more context about why I like them.

ChumpLady: ChumpLady is hilarious. The main focus of the blog is on married victims of infidelity. However, ChumpLady's articles are always a great read, and since she believes that many if not most cheaters are narcissistic, the focus of a lot of her writing is on coping with, and especially leaving, relationships with narcissistic partners. With her snark, she decodes and deflates the self-serving rhetoric, emotional manipulation, and enormous egos narcissistic people use to justify their self-serving actions. She gives great emotional and legal suggestions and encourages people not to accept abuse. She says the only question we have to ask ourselves is, "Is this relationship acceptable to me?" Additionally, she has a large and active community of international commenters, and I believe there is a Facebook group as well. Hearing the experiences of others helps to cut through the sense of isolation we so often feel, and shows that there's a fairly small, predictable set of behaviors that disordered people use to try to get their way. Although my experience of infidelity was many years ago, I read this blog and the comments often, to keep my awareness of the red flags sharp. In my opinion, reading through the archives and past comments would be useful (and comforting!) to anyone struggling with a difficult relationship, particularly with a narcissistic or abusive partner.

Captain Awkward: Captain Awkward writes about all kinds of relationships, not just romantic partnerships or marriages. The best part, in my opinion, is that she often -- particularly in older posts -- provides specific, practical suggestions and even scripts for having difficult conversations with family, ending friendships, and other situations that arise frequently when trying to deal with difficult people. This is true even though the blog isn't focused on dysfunctional relationships. She's really great at describing how to set boundaries and countering the self-doubt and justifications a lot of us struggle with in our relationships. I didn't find the comments as useful as the ones on ChumpLady and Captain Awkward isn't accepting comments on newer posts, but the posts themselves are in-depth, practical, kind, and often quite amusing. The best way I've found to find posts relevant to whatever situation I'm coping with, is by using the categories/tags. And don't dismiss posts for being old, they're kind of timeless!

Good luck and I hope you find something that helps you.

[Rebel13]

Oh my goodness, let me start you off!  I haven't looked at Captain Awkward lately, and this new post is awesome.  Winning line:  "...you cannot love another person into being okay, and you definitely cannot love someone who treats you like shit out of treating you like shit."

Enjoy!