Feb 13, 2026 at 3:11 PM FWB sounds like a healthy down-titration, but in reality it's a slippery upward slope. plus, imagine if/when you start dating or f---ing someone else and she's still in the mix.
Feb 13, 2026 at 3:35 PM I've only ever seen FWB work personally when it was just an actual friends-only friend who got access to the benefits... the downgrade, a reversal to "friends" with sexy time from full couple status never really took for me
Feb 13, 2026 at 4:48 PM This only works if you don't love her and just want her for the sex. Seems to me you actually miss her. What if in the process you find out she met someone else or breaks ur heart again? Not sure if that's worth it bro
Feb 13, 2026 at 6:05 PM Think about it this way: you might have more women coming your way that wanted to date you but saw you were taken. Whenever I go through breakups I notice I start to get DMs from women who want to “comfort” me.
Feb 13, 2026 at 7:29 PM I guess it’s better than those women who try to get with me during the relationship. I ain’t no cheater!
Feb 14, 2026 at 2:52 AM Well, update. We met for what I thought would be just sex but ended up being 5 hour talk...and sex. Sort of a closure. I did not get the urge to get back togethet, even though she seems to have taken the best out of this situation and decided to clean her life up. She seemed healthy and stable. But something in me is gone and now I know.
Feb 14, 2026 at 8:15 AM That's really a great outcome for a tough situation, @Spatula. I'm glad you were able to get that sense of closure and actually discuss stuff... sounded like it would have been horrible to try to move on from with things as they were. You sound solid and decisive today. Good on you.
Feb 14, 2026 at 8:56 AM Thank you. You are right, it would have been horrible to have the last image of her be what it was that day. I am incredibly sad we have to part ways. She said she thought I am the one and was convinced we were going to work.
Feb 14, 2026 at 10:46 AM That’s kind of heartbreaking, but you never do know what might happen down the line. As an addict myself with a bit of sobriety under my belt again, I have to tell you… if you do reconcile, do it with eyes open. Backsliding and relapses happen to addicts because it’s part of addiction, not because we don’t want to keep our lives stable, or because we don’t love those in our lives. The struggle doesn’t disappear because a person might accumulate years of sobriety, or grow up. You don’t grow out of addiction and you don’t get cured. It’s a biologically permanent trait after a certain point, kind of like having an awful knee injury — you’re just never the same again. You’re weak at the site of the injury, and you'll always have to be careful. It’s a vulnerability that’s always going to be there. If she’s really got a problem and fights to stay sober, then it’s probably entrenched, a part of her. Anyone who gets involved with any addict needs to be sure they’re willing to deal with the using if it resurfaces again. Yes, it’s our own fault to begin with, developing an addiction, but it’s like driving too fast. The results are your own fault, and then it’s another animal altogether once the damage is done. You change for the worst. It’s re-wired you. For me, I needed rehab twice. First I at age 18 I was legally obligated to because of my first felony. I relapsed the day after I got out. Got sober again a year later because I almost lost a relationship I was in that I really wanted. I managed to stay sober for 14 years. We got married. I promptly relapsed, and that relapse lasted 8 years even though I fought it like h---. Almost gave up because it seemed beyond my ability to kick. It was much, much harder to get clean this last time. I must have relapsed dozens of times in that 8 year period. I put my husband through h---. He’s still here and I could never have stayed sober without his support. I should point out that when I got sober the first time, he gave up drinking too, so there was never booze around when I was with him (the only substance he was ever interested in). We don’t have it in our house at all, ever, now. Today he’s been sober way longer than I have, but he never had a problem. He said nothing good had ever come of drinking that he could see, so he just gave it up. And to be relevant to the forum here, Relapse came out and was a lifeline to me; I took a lot of strength from it. Recovery followed, and I returned to rehab for Round 2. Anyway. Just notes from those trenches. When I was using, I cared about very little besides getting f----- up. I lied and hid it and snuck around and wasted a s--- ton of money. I’m lucky to be alive. It’s hard to be around that, and it frequently gets a lot worse than I ever had it. I suppose there’s never a guarantee that someone you might marry who has no problem when you get together won’t develop one later, but if the problem is already there, that’s a undeniable and visible risk, especially if you think you’ll want kids. I hope everything works out for you. You sound wise.
Feb 14, 2026 at 11:01 AM Thank you for this @1929357390 Its hard for me, and her, to consider her an alcoholic. It seems so odd. I keep saying "she just drinks fast and doesnt know her limit" because its not that she has to drink every day. But I guess that too falls under alcoholism. I am curious, what inspiration did you find in Relapse? There is very few honest addiction related moments there, despite the name.
Feb 14, 2026 at 12:35 PM You’re very welcome. Telling my story honestly helps me hang onto my sobriety, because I remember the nightmare so vividly when I do. Little motivates like misery. Hard disagree on Relapse, though that’s definitely a personal call. There are using and temptation imagery and references threaded throughout the entire thing, beginning with the cover. I laughed when I saw it. In the midst of using, I certainly felt built by the pills, like they were underneath the rest of everything. Dr. West is a dream of the addiction demon in disguise; the demon voice is introduced here, and immediately the nightmare of using and pursuit hit home. The shapeshifter demon nature of addiction comes back later in a huge way in My Darling. 3 am looked to me like a self-destruction essay. Running from addiction, dead bodies that are all different versions of you. How many times and ways can you destroy yourself? There’s just way too many drug, using, and addiction Easter eggs to list them all here, so I’ll focus on the ones that were the biggest elements for me. My Darling from the deluxe edition stayed on repeat for months. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s practically an anthem to the experience of fighting off temptation; it’s got a lot of layers, like addiction does. The rattling of the cage, right from the start, never lets up; all the way through the song you hear it. This is what it’s like to try not to think about the pills, the substance, using. It’s an obsession. You’ve got to cage it, confine it. It doesn’t get extinguished. It doesn’t get obliterated. You can’t k--- it. It can only ever get restrained, and it’s often much more powerful than the cage restraining it. And even when the cage holds, you hear it trying to break out. You hear it, you feel it throwing itself against the bars. That rattling cage vibrated my bones while I was trying to not use. Half the statement of this song is in the sound effects. Then there’s the “demon” voice. Addiction talks to you: “look how bad you had it, look at everything you’ve had to deal with, look how many reasons there are to go back to who you were, look how good we were together, you can’t do this without me, no one’s gonna love you like I do…” You fight with it. You answer it. It’s exhausting to have the same f---ing argument a thousand times, every day, every few hours, every five f---ing minutes, because the voice is right, often, and accurate. Like trying to break up with someone you love because you know it’ll never work, only they refuse to go, and tell you only the good stuff over and over, though “good” here isn’t exactly the right word. Em sounds pissed, responding to the voice. I was too. It’s enraging, fighting that s--- off nonstop. It’s f---ing diabolical that it won’t stay down after you knocked it off your back and caged it, that it manipulates your own experience and weaponizes it against you to justify relapsing, that it just won’t leave you alone. It’s infuriating. When addicts say “struggle,” that’s the idea, but the word isn't really ugly enough and the concept within it isn’t immolating enough to show what resistance of that temptation costs, or how it often plays out psychologically. It’s a mean, bloody, s----encrusted dirty fight. It can feel like warfare, hand to hand combat. This song is exactly what it’s like, for me, on bad days. That f---ing rattling cage. Then the demon voice gets merged the end of the verse with Em’s own, rapping the lyrics together. This resonates because addiction is only ever you, yourself, but it feels like the worst, most self destructive version of you. It also feels like it’s stronger than you, especially when you try to get away from it. It feels like someone, or something, else. And when you do relapse, that separation is an easy excuse for avoiding responsibility: it’s too much for me. My demons overcame me. Then sometimes the people around you don’t like your efforts to get sober and try to draw you back in. Like you aren’t your own worst enemy already. Last thing you need is people in your life trying to talk you out of something you can barely do anyway. Here, it’s Dre: “ever since you got off your pills you became a lot softer.” You can lose a lot of friends if you get sober. Addicts usually surround ourselves with other substance abusers. Those people, the ones who try to derail your efforts, they’re not your friends. In this song at 4:37, you hear a chainsaw and gunshots. Did this ever hit home for me. Using is self-violence, to our lives and selves, and addiction has a deadly nature that’s entirely self inflicted. This s--- will k--- you if the cage won’t hold, and it tries. My Darling is one of my top five favorite songs of all time because of how deeply accurate it was to hear, from the very first play. I never had to think about any of this — it was instinctual recognition. That drag out fight I’d been losing for years by that point was, in that single song, completely validated. I grabbed onto it like a life raft: Maybe it isn’t this unconquerably bad only for me. Maybe I’m not a total failure, maybe it’s really as bad as it seems. Maybe I’m not incapable, maybe everyone who tries to quit can barely do it either for a reason. The Mr. Mathers skit is soul-crushing if you’ve overdosed (I did, more than once), Deja Vu is another one. Careful What You Wish For. Addiction’s pull and power are represented absolutely everywhere in this album, often closely tied to Em’s own triggers of how and why he justified it to himself: the fame. The demands. The isolation. My triggers were different, but his experience was the same as mine. But if you’ve never burned on that stake, why would you really see the details? Whenever he named them, they landed directly on me in my addiction. Relapse will always be one of my favorite albums of all time for this reason. It’s hard to listen to because while I was so consumed with it and playing it endlessly, I was actively using, trying to get sober, and relapsing again and again. I chewed my opiates; when I listen to My Darling, the association with that time of my life is so overwhelmingly strong I can taste Vicodin. It makes me miss it. 10/10 album for me. First time I felt up to, maybe equal to, the task of being addicted, because its catastrophic mayhem and disaster felt accurately, profoundly represented, and I understood that it wasn’t just me. Relapse was, to my eyes then, a cage. And if he could cage it, maybe I could too. I should add a couple of important details: Em and I are about the same age, and both from Detroit. The similarities between our experiences created a sense of identity that was a big part of my perception of possibility.
Feb 14, 2026 at 12:41 PM Labels matter less than the fallout, to me. If you cringe every time she drinks, that’s the thing that counts. There are definitely different degrees of harmful using. My little sister developed a drinking problem later in life during a bad relationship. It was absolutely an undeniable issue but she was able to give it up almost all at once, once she saw that. I know of no other lifelong addicts who ever did it in one go. One size does not fit all, so maybe your (ex)girl’s situation will be simpler to remedy than mine was. I certainly hope so.
Feb 14, 2026 at 1:03 PM How did you kick the pills? what's withdrawal like? I smoke weed and I'm thinking of quitting like in have done a thousand times but always started back up. They say Weeds is an easy kick, it isn't... I'm not looking forward to the weeks of sleepless nights and cold sweats.
Feb 14, 2026 at 2:11 PM It can be so hard to stay away from whatever your thing is, I know how that goes. And weed is waaaaay more potent than it used to be. It’s not even the same high, it hits you as hard as any other drug. You can do it if you want to, but quitting and staying quit isn’t for p-----s. You do have to want it and sometimes that means getting help. For me with pills, sick was definitely part of it. I felt like I’d been run over by a train. At rehab they detoxed me on the med unit. It’s dangerous to just go without all of a sudden so they’re careful. I was coming off of three main drugs: barbiturates, opioids & booze. Sleepless nights, check. Shakes and puking and unpredictable diarrhea, check, often simultaneously. Horrid restlessness, I couldn’t sit still. Nightmares when I was able to sleep at all. Hallucinations, usually at night, in the dark. Shaking. Sweating, yes. Sick like that for maybe 72 hours, the worst symptoms were over in about 4 days. Then I got hungry, and once I started eating food again, all of a sudden I felt human. It was really quite something; after that, I felt physically better quickly, but the wanting, the craving, that stuck around. When I was checked out, my doctor put me on suboxone. I stayed on it for a year, and it made a huge difference with physical urges. Coming off that s--- was far worse than the pills, lol holy f---ing fucknuggets. Took me thirty days, at least, to build up endurance of any kind. I couldn’t walk to the corner and back. If you want to shake it off, just don’t quit quitting. It helps to be stubborn.
Feb 14, 2026 at 4:49 PM That sounds like a lovely time lol jesus christ. You should be proud that you've got as far as you have for real. Thanks for the advice dude preciate it
