When did it “click” for you that’s what posted here/the principles were helping/helped you? Let’s start a list for others…

whiskey_and_oreos · 2021-07-22T00:46:26+00:00

Last fall, I was unhappily married, Google searching ways to make him listen to my boundaries, plan special events (he had just skipped another birthday of mine and blown off our anniversary again), and basically just treat me like he did at the start of our relationship.

For years I'd tried raising concerns with him, my family, friends, therapists, coworkers, you name it. I knew I wasn't happy but it was an intangible thing I couldn't touch or name, so the world told me to stay with him since he wasn't abusive, communicate ad nauseum, and "keep trying."

Except I was trying. I was an alt cool girl, for fuck's sake! I planned vacations and special events, I found couple's therapists and individual therapists for both of us, at one point I brought a laptop into the bedroom to watch porn during sex, I made the chore chart he said would help his ADHD. We would have hours long discussions only for him to forget the conversation ever happened.

The more I contorted, the less he needed to, because I was doing it all.

I don't know what post I read first. All I know is I found FDS and spent the next week reading posts and the handbook and one thing kept coming up: "if he wanted to, he would." And my then-husband never once wanted to. So many things crashed into place in the next few weeks. He knew I loved food and culture and going to new places; he never once made a restaurant or hotel reservation in seven years, not even for my birthday. He figured out one type of flower that lasted two weeks and would buy me a bouquet in different colors once in a blue moon but I never had the heart to tell him I didn't like them because I knew he'd stop buying flowers. He thought quality time was sitting on the couch playing video games while I watched or planned our next trip and that all physical contact led to unfulfilling (for me) sex.

In the last months of our marriage, I kept repeating to myself "if he wanted to, he would. if he wanted to understand, he would. if he wanted to love me, he would." to break myself out of the cycle he was trying to pull me back into because nothing is more desperate than a man about to lose his personal chef, porn star, and maid.

This space showed me an alternative reality where I had listened to my gut instincts and walked out on our first coffee date, or six months in when the honeymoon chemicals wore off, or months before the wedding I planned by myself. It's not that I was ever afraid of living alone (I had before), but I was taught that my worth was in what I did for others. I saw other women who settled like I did waking up from the same fog and asking "what else were we lied to about?" And that allowed me forgive my past self because it wasn't just me or how my family raised me, it's a cultural and societal problem on how we treat and define men and women. I saw the quiet doubts in my head out loud in this space as post titles and rants.

And for any lurkers reading and doubting: You can't unsee these problems. I left six months ago, about four months after I found FDS. I have a cute apartment in an area of town I love. I'm sleeping better and eating better. My skin cleared up. The time I used to spend arguing for basic human decency I now spend on self care, hobbies, and going to the gym. I take myself on dates to places I've always wanted to try but my ex wouldn't bother because he didn't want to. This is why women glow tf up after a breakup or divorce.

Lost_Kale90 · 2021-07-22T01:03:38+00:00

When I first came across FDS. I read post after post and thought it was so incredible. Like all my most innermost thoughts and feelings that I experienced or witnessed, were so validated. I no longer had to believe what I feel has been pushed down my throat during my life.

And then some things I didn't know but just clicked - The emotional labor that is put on women to cOmmUnicate and coMMunicAte and commUNcatE. Like no. Never again will I waste my precious time and energy trying to fix, solve, compromise issues in my relationship when the man is barely putting any effort into resolution.

runesnroses · 2021-07-22T00:33:58+00:00

As we were breaking up (a long and drawn out process), I kept asking my ex “why do you even like me?” And his answers were all about either my physical appearance, his needs (I don’t want to have sex with someone else, I’m looking for the anecdotes you share, you’ve taken ownership of cleaning the kitchen???), or how hard it would be to find someone with equivalent qualities he can boast about.

I was like, oh god I’m an accessory and a bangmaid. 🤭

swaylyn · 2021-07-22T00:31:17+00:00

The moment it clicked was when a past post describing a situation and what the LV action/words given and said ACTUALLY MEAN in relation to the woman.

And then when my then bf played the scene out like a script I was like omg I read about this on Reddit. (That’s when I knew he was LV. Before that I would read and compare and go hmmm my then bf is kinda like that but he’s not LV he’s a good guy. 🙄)

The analyzing the ladies do to directly say “he doesn’t care it’s clear Bc” I’ve truly found so helpful and reinforcing to combat the denial and wishful thinking I would experience

verysadgirly · 2021-07-22T02:33:31+00:00

A really hot guy was interested in me, he had a really great six-figure job where he was his own boss, he had his own apartment, which was really clean, and a really nice truck. But all he wanted to do was hook up with me and take me out drinking. Before FDS, I would have 100% taken him up on the offer because I would be thinking that one day it would lead to a relationship. But after FDS, I realize this is not how myself or any woman should be treated, like we are just some object he can use or some hole that he can just stick his dick into. From this sub I was able to learn my worth.

Edit: to add, I joined this sub a little over a year ago when I was in a six year long relationship with an LVM. The relationship ended about a year ago. After the relationship ended I hooked up with three guys and settled for men continuously using me for my body. Unfortunately it took until last month for the above incident to happen for the principles of FDS to finally set in and click, like a lightbulb finally went off. When these pickme actions and beliefs are so ingrained in your mind it really takes a lot of action on your part to change your mindset. But I believe I finally did it.

puzzlebitties · 2021-07-22T01:18:26+00:00

I went though a really tough time, my ex of over a decade cheated and left, I'd been controlled by him since I was a teenager and then I was finally free and terrified I'd just jump at the first guy that looked at me the right way because I couldn't handle being alone, people close to me also died around this period and I was just super messed up. This sub honestly made me stay away from LVM and get my life on track without thinking I needed a man to do that. It's been 2 and a half years since I escaped that relationship and while my other single friends were constantly trying to find a man I was happy to be alone. Men would try but I just didn't want them because I could see what a LVM was now because of this sub. I have met someone now who is high value, the only one I ever even considered in the last 2 and a half years because I learned healthy standards here and no one was going to make me compromise or lower those standards. So this sub basically landed me my dream guy and I will be forever thankful

ho-chet · 2021-07-22T01:25:53+00:00

The moment it clicked for me was when I realized a guy I was pining after was a lvm who was just stringing me along for an ego boost. FDS made it much easier for me to stop crushing on him and see the situation for what it was.

pinkcorolla · 2021-07-22T04:16:14+00:00

When FDS really highlighted that cherishing your partner is NORMAL and EXPECTED. I started to realise it was me who was doing everything, me trying to make him happy and never the other way around. He never bought me a gift or if he did it was because I hinted lots of times that I wanted measly flowers and a box of chocolates. The term “if he wanted to he would” really struck a cord in me because I saw him buying himself gifts and his family gifts I was just never included. I couldn’t unsee how insanely neglected and unappreciated I was so I left. Ghosted, blocked and deleted. 💀

ComprehensiveAmoeba9 · 2021-07-22T01:59:49+00:00

I discovered FDS through another popular sub. I was a lurker for a bit but then I started reading more posts and the handbook. FDS helped me realize that my feelings are valid. I don’t have to cater to a man and I don’t need one to fulfill my goals in life. I used to think I was just being insecure when I felt uncomfortable that my exes would watch porn and look at other women’s nudes. This sub also helped me realize that my intuition matters and that if I start feeling anxious and unhappy in a relationship, I need to leave. I don’t need to waste my time worrying if he’s going to text me back, if he still loves me, or what he thinks of me. Since I’m leveling up and gaining more confidence, I’ve been able to more easily identify red flags and not put up with low effort, shitty behavior. And it feels amazing! Thanks to this sub, I blocked and ignored LVM lurking in my DMs, LV exes, and cut off a man who lacked consistency and stopped putting in effort👑

vbych76 · 2021-07-22T05:44:19+00:00

For me it clicked when I saw that there were so many women experiencing the same, women from all over the world, different backgrounds and characters,were having problems similar to mine. That no matter what we do or sacrifice, how we act or even who we are as people, if a scrote gets a chance to scrote, he will scrote away.It is like reading the cheat sheet. So thank you all.

Nifteroni-and-Cheese · 2021-07-22T04:06:01+00:00

For me, it was after a guy dropped some red flags and I just ghosted him, not worth the effort. A few months later I ran into him in public and he tried SO HARD (like, really pushy and gross) to get me to go out with him but I just said no and went on with my life. A friend saw me talking to him and told me that he had sexually assaulted someone she knew. I already had cut him out thanks to FDS, and I wouldn’t have gotten that warning until it was too late if I hadn’t ghosted him in the first place.

FrenchHeel · 2021-07-22T02:13:29+00:00

So… I’m a Giver. I can’t stop it. It’s in me to nurture and help and be the wind beneath everyone’s wings. I feel joy seeing someone succeed where they struggled and I was there to give a hand up.

This is great when I’m working with other women or helping out kids. The only group that consistently turned my hand up into a handout was men.

I had already been a good dater when I was young, but I applied these ideas only to romantic relationships. I forgot that there were other relationships in my life where I need to put myself first. I had been figuring it out for a while when I found this subreddit and there it all was, the stories that echoed my own experiences and the strategies to handle them better.

dancedancedance7 · 2021-07-22T08:32:14+00:00

I had a lot of the realizations described in the handbook after a completely terrible relationship when I was 24. I felt completely alone in my thoughts for a couple of years because people told me I was harsh, jaded, calculating. But I saw many of these same people get wrecked or have their time wasted.

Even though I knew it in my heart, I didn't have the eloquent arguments for why 50/50 is messed up, why it takes a long time to really understand someone's motivations, why insecure people are a raging nightmare to date, etc etc. When I tried putting things into words, my thoughts were argued against without consideration and shut down, so I kept my subversive opinions to myself. I found FDS last year, and it gave me the language and confidence.

It also gave me inspiration to see women actually making positive changes in their lives while running their standards at 100%. 👑 I love this sub. 😊

barbedwiredaisycrown · 2021-07-22T12:31:10+00:00

It clicked when I found the post that brought me to FDS. Growing up I was an ice queen who stuck to her principles and was the "dump him" friend much to everyone's disapproval. People actually expect women to just stay in shitty situations because acknowledging the lived experience of women makes them uncomfortable.

I tried searching for the post just now but didn't find it. I might be dating myself here, but it was titled "I ghosted my boyfriend after 5 years". And when the woman came home and found her boyfriend asleep naked with another woman she didn't say a thing just packed her shit and left. My family would have never supported me had I done the same thing. I'd have been called a cruel, selfish bitch no matter WHAT he'd done to deserve it, because the onus is always on women to be the bigger person for some reason??? (Lol we like demand women do better but no one will even pretend to lie to you that men can do better.)

I realized I wasn't a cruel selfish bitch. I'd had my head screwed on right the whole time. The people who didn't like that were jealous of me, not self aware, or had no self esteem. Thank goodness I found FDS when I did because society's gaslighting had nearly broken me. It reinforced everything I already believed, showed me where I could even increase my standards and do better, and that there is nothing wrong with having boundaries and expecting good treatment. GO FIGURE 😜

pugaczalla · 2021-07-22T11:17:27+00:00

FDS helped me to question my internalised misogyny, realise what compulsory heterosexuality is and to come out as bisexual.

I was deep, deep in denial about my attraction to women. I spend my middle and high school years fantasising about my female classmate while rejecting every boy or dropping boys after kissing them. I still identified as fully hetero well into my late twenties…

I realised that what I want from men is affection, admiration and for them to see me as a good and worthy person, but not a romantic love. This is due to growing up with an abusive father in addition to living in misogynistic, patriarchal society. I dated men for them to see my worth. Deconstructing my childhood in psychotherapy and applying FDS rules to dating made me realise that my every single relationship and a dating experience with men was unfulfilling and a waste of time (even with potentially HVMs). As of today, I want nothing from men. I won’t ever again try to prove something to a man or date a man for validation or out of fear that the older I get, the less likely it is that anyone will want to date me. I’m free from the internalised misogyny in this context.

Perhaps I’m a lesbian. I’m still figuring it out after my whole life in the closet (of denial). When I picture myself married to a man, even a HVM, I feel trapped and I’m suffocating. When I picture myself married to a woman, I feel connected and open to what life brings. I don’t know yet whether this is because patriarchy makes me feel trapped in general, or whether I truly want to build my life with a woman.

What a journey it is those past 1,5 years since finding FDS… 😄

wrice05 · 2021-07-22T13:08:51+00:00

I came in after searching for "how to get over a crush" or somesuch. I was so unhappy after ending up in two situationships in a row but I didn't understand how or why it kept happening. I didn't KNOW I was a Pickme. I kept auditioning for these men because that was what I had been taught. I kept performing patriarchy-sanctioned femininity as hard as I possibly could thinking I should and could win them over into treating me with reciprocal care and respect. We talk down on Pickmes at times (and sometimes it's so clownish that we almost have to) but being a Pickme is actually women following the script they've been handed with obsessive perfectionism. Most Pickmes are trying so hard with such sincerity to "get it right" so they can earn love. They (formerly we) titrate their every behavior, phrase, nuance of physical appearance with the dedication of Nobel-prize winning chemists to create the precise combination that will make him love us the way we want him to, taking all responsibility for why he isn't treating us right--we just have to work harder. At least that was my experience.

FDS hit me like a lightning bolt. I started to wake up to the insane level of gaslighting our society subjects women to literally from our toddler Disney brainwashing days. I started to make changes, chuck the LVM, and level up. Still working on it today, but I've finally made inroads on turning the exquisite level of care I used to pour into men who barely even noticed it, much less appreciated it, toward myself and the people in my life who reciprocate it. Fighting against the power of 5000 years of oppression plus multi-trillion dollar industries dependent on making us hate ourselves is tough, Queens. Proud of every one of us doing it every day.

SunflowerinVirgo0903 · 2021-07-22T12:30:17+00:00

I think I googled about "the wall." After stumbling upon very misogynistic forums of men talking about women.The things they were saying was heartbreaking and evil. This was also after my very abusive ex (serving probation for domestic violence) he was very addicted to barely legal teen porn which fucked me up. A post came up on FDS about how the wall was a lie and we were being brainwashed. I then went through the handbook and everything made 100% sense. And, actually, it was things I felt for a long time but felt I couldn't say. I was always torn bc I am a liberal non christian person.

I'm pansexual/queer so I always felt off with libfems like I should believe these things but didn't. Then I read about feminism being infiltrated by the patriarchy; the result being liberal feminism. The logic of libfems made no sense to me; it's like an oxymoron to me or something. I was already in the middle of a serious awakening. I realized why I made so many bad decisions with partners. I believed the hype about taking in a fixer upper- that they will love you more. I would fall in love with people who had nothing going for them and they would try to destroy my self esteem.

There's so much more but that was the beginning. LADIES do NOT believe you need to date the nerdy guy or ugly guy and all that extreme bs. They will RESENT you and your worth will diminish in their eyes bc they will wonder what you are doing with them. They will start looking for better even if you are considerably more attractive than them. Abusers aren't just "chads" every person I have been with was not conventionally attractive and eventually treated me like an option regardless.

It took me awhile though. 3 months after I found fds I met a very attractive man at work that fits everything FDS says no about and it set me on a hiatus. It's very hard for some (it was for me anyway) to unlearn what we have been taught even if logically you know better.

If you grew up with a narc mother who was an extreme pickme ect., it's very hard to untrain your brain from the centuries of internalized misogyny and everything else. Get into therapy and be gentle with yourself. Forgive yourself for not knowing your worth. Keep getting back up even if you fall. It takes a lot of practice and healing to stop putting up with crap. It's also scary to go against the grain. We are trailblazers and we are strong af. Don't doubt yourself, because I do believe the groundwork we are putting down will be recognized at some point in history I really do.

Edit: also realize men are manipulative abusers whether they are the ugliest or the hottest. I have found the ugly men I have been around are the hardest on women's looks. Men are problematic whether pretty or repulsive. Ignore these assholes claiming we just want "chads" it's just another cope for them.

BooksandEarlGreyTea · 2021-07-22T11:25:39+00:00

I found FDS in July 2019, when I was in therapy and questioning a lot of stuff going on in my life. I was questioning relationships and I found some posts about how men are which spoke to me in a way my therapist never quite managed to. We had discussed boundaries a lot but I was never able to full grasp my struggles. I left after a week of lurking but I came back months later to lurk once more because that week lurking was when something clicked that changed me - I couldn't unsee what had been pointed out.

I finally saw all a safe space spout the radical feminist ideas I had once agreed with as a teen and been brainwashed out of over the years. I saw all these acceptable boundaries and people challenging the male stories or response on the internet which had been my guide to understanding relationships and sex, I saw other people sharing all the things I had experienced - the way men used and abused then, and how by being around liberal feminists my old beliefs and boundaries has ever so slowly been moved and adjusted over time as I needed to be more 'open-minded'.

Over time I saw like other ladies here mentioning narcissism, co-dependence and societal brainwashing, breaking it down and sharing books to help me learn and grow. I saw how I was raised and trained by my FOO and society to be invisible, and standing up for myself brought punishment, giving the benefit of the doubt and not trusting myself ever was leading me to self-destruct through sex and relationships with people I should never have been involved with - but I didn't care, my apathy and need for external support was too strong (my logic was if I can't get it from my family then I can get it from a partner).

It also made me see I did have some standards and boundaries, even though I thought they had been eradicated. That I was resisting the attempt to dump all the emotional labour on me in some small way let them do most of the housework because they own the house) - that I had trusted my gut to keep an emotionless face when I scrote tried to gaslight me saying I conned him into a relationship he never wanted during the break up, but still had the audacity to ask for sex to keep going the next day and I told him no.

That one week was all it took to forever change me, because everything about me was being validated by others here - all my thoughts, feelings and opinions which I have always been struggling to share lest I go against my people pleasing training.

I stood up to someone only when they decided to try and pick a fight, I held my ground and the scrote rage quit the argument. Funnily enough, he keeps well away from me if we are at the same event together now. The world didn't fall apart at me taking back my power, and I am now slowly building up the 'villain' phase of my life - because a Queen who knows her power, owns it and is unapologetic about enforcing her boundaries is villainised in society.

Altowhovian93 · 2021-07-22T17:06:34+00:00

For me it was when I realized that marriage isn’t a struggle when you are with someone that treats you like an equal while also being an active provider. I saw a lot of posts of women going “marriage is sooo hard and you have to fight and struggle buts it’s worth it” and I was like “are we weird? We don’t argue often, we have discussions, we compromise, and we both put effort into showing our appreciation of us.” My marriage isn’t weird, people around me just normalized that marriage has to be a struggle because it’s also normalized that women have to do all the emotional labor.

TLDR; it’s okay to be weird, don’t stop until you find a man that will do the emotional labor necessary for a healthy relationship.

shiningsuns · 2021-07-22T16:12:25+00:00

When I realized all the red flags and f*ckboy behaviour, that are talked about on here, applied to the guy who broke my heart. I could have prevented it, if I had known about those red flags. And you learn so much about boundaries and valuing yourself. The book recommendations are a must read! 🖤

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