Tumgik
#thinking about how they’ve lived together for 20+ years and act like a dysfunctional married couple despite not dating
Text
Thinking about macdennis for too long gives me a tummy ache
12 notes · View notes
onisionhurtspeople · 6 years
Note
i’m 100% for lainey labeling their gender in whatever way feels right for them, dressing however feels right, and using whatever pronouns feel right. i’m not gonna doubt or question their identity or anyone else’s. what rubs me the wrong way is how they emulate and almost fetishize the “teen” aesthetic. when they’ve said they look like a 12 year old boy and implied that it was attractive/hot/a good thing, i was kinda creeped out. idk how to explain it but i think it sends a really bad message.
Ah, yeah, that’s another thing I’ve been considering writing about for a while: how much Lainey seems to fetishize adolescence. Get ready for another one of my pointless tl;drs that nobody ever reads or cares about, y’all!
If Lainey was removed from the context surrounding the reasons why we all spend so much time scrutinizing her behavior in the first place, I doubt most people would have a problem with the fact that she seems almost pathologically obsessed with portraying herself as a 15-year-old girl in both style and personality, rather than as the 23-year-old wife and mother of two that she is. 
But the issue, of course, is that Lainey’s preferences do not exist in a vacuum; they mean something, and that’s what we’re here to analyze. She is married to a man who fetishizes teenage girls himself, because they’re easier to control and manipulate. She indulges in, and relates to, a culture that heavily emphasizes youth and immaturity (referring to boyfriends as “daddy”, having a DDlg (Daddy Dom/little girl) fetish, being “taken care of” by men (and treated like a little princess in bed), constantly alluding to not knowing what they’re doing in life, assuming a guileless pose in selfies that reflect a certain youthful confusion and spontaneity, constantly referencing their childlike habits (”touch my butt and buy me pizza”, “I have no idea what I’m doing”, “im a crybaby” flavors of meme), dressing like a 12-year-old in overalls, children’s Pokemon panties, and pastel-colored hair and clothing with simplistic, childlike patterns, etc - not that I think there’s anything inherently wrong with any of these things, but all of these pieces of the puzzle fit together to paint the picture of a person who is unhealthily obsessed with living out their life as a teenager. You guys know the ~aesthetic~ that I’m trying to drive at here).
She indulges in cultural trends targeted towards children and young teens. Her entire personality revolves around sensitivity, helplessness, passivity; she exudes anxiety, uncertainty, and confusion; and openly discusses being so sensitive that she becomes completely overwhelmed by even the most simple of tasks that adults are expected to be able to do. And again, I’m not saying that these are inherently negative traits (although obviously when these qualities run your life, it can become problematic); but Lainey seems almost proud of these traits. She’s more than just open about it. She brags about them. She romanticizes them. She constructs elaborate internal fantasies around them. Her entire identity revolves around being a ~smol sensitive anxious space prince daddy~. 
On top of all these things, almost everybody that she hangs out with or considers to be her friend (from Sarah, who lives with her, all the way down to the girls who she interacts with on Discord) is a teenager. She does not speak to women her own age. It’s bizarre. I used to have a friend who was quite a bit younger than me, by three and a half years - the first time we met in real life was on her 16th birthday, and I was 19, almost 20; and despite the fact that we were best friends and that I had so many other friends my own age, there was a very obvious and noticeable difference in our maturity levels. I’m not saying that uneven friendships like this can’t work or are inherently inappropriate, but again, within the context of Lainey’s life, it’s an enormous red flag that she seems to be unable to relate with women her own age, and can only form friendships with teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 21. Even outside of the context of her marriage (because let’s not forget that she’s married to a man who openly admits to having a sexual preference for young women, because they’re at “peak fertility” according to him), the fact that she relates the most with teenage girls is a huge indication that Lainey herself is either a) extremely mature, b) purposely seeks to enter uneven friendships with younger girls because it balances the friendship in her favor, giving her more power and control (which wouldn’t surprise me if true, given that she’s married to Onision - she needs to be able to exercise control in SOME way), c) is emotionally stunted and frozen at the age of ~18 due to Onision’s influence on her psychological development, or d) a sexual predator who herself prefers teenage girls. I’m sure everybody has their own theory on why this is, but personally I think it’s probably a mixture of all four, with option c being the most prominent motivation. 
I think Lainey projects herself onto teenage girls because she feels very much unprepared for this world, threatened by it, and does not trust her own ability to navigate adulthood successfully. In this regard, I think Greg managed to find almost a perfect partner for himself - a girl who is trapped in her adolescence in perpetuity (largely by choice, but partly through direction by Onision), who purposely cuts herself off from growing and learning and emerging as a young adult because it’s less dangerous and challenging for her to remain within her psychological safe zone, being coddled like a baby and completely controlled and taken care of by Greg, who looks after all of the hard things in her life that she struggles with (doing taxes, making money, going outside to get groceries, paying bills, interacting with strangers, making appointments, earning a living wage) - all of the practical, adult things that Lainey is terrified of doing, because it’s so overwhelming to her. Greg, of course, loves this. Lainey is his ideal partner: a woman who needs to be with a man like him, who defines her entire identity for her. A man who directs her, tells her what to do, is domineering and aggressive, and who makes all of her decisions for her. Tells her what to do, who to be, what to feel, how to act. A man who has complete control over every aspect of her life. A narcissist (him) and an inverted narcissist, or codependent (her). 
And so this is why Lainey is so obsessed with portraying herself as a teenager. Teenagers hit that sweet spot in between childhood and adulthood that Lainey feels trapped by in perpetuity. On the one hand, she is not a child - she is a sexual being; she has kinks, and preferences, and desires to express herself and her sexual identity. On the other hand, though, neither is she an adult - she is immature, self-absorbed, has an unstable sense of self, doesn’t know who she is, hypersensitive, anxious, gets overwhelmed easily, indulges often in her learned helplessness, and makes no attempt to change any of this - she revels in her dysfunction; she romanticizes it. And there is no age that typifies this combination of traits better than a teenage girl does. She doesn’t just relate to teenagers; she wants to be a teenager, forever–and in some ways, she really is, because the interference of Greg on Lainey’s emotional, psychological, social, and sexual growth has had a catastrophic impact on her development. She is essentially a 16-year-old girl trapped within the body of a 23-year-old mother of two. And that’s exactly what she wants. 
I think what’s ultimately going to be what destroys Greg and Lainey’s marriage is that eventually, Lainey is going to be too old for Greg, and he’s going to feel compelled to pick up another 17-, 18-, and 19-year-old girl again from his existing pool of die-hard fans. Already it’s quite apparent that Greg is bored of Lainey (as evidenced by the fact that he is still actively trying to find women to cheat on her with, even after what happened with Billie); but once the cost of maintaining her becomes more expensive than the cost of replacing her with a new, hot, young, alternative, impressionable teenage girl, he will do what he tried to do once before with Billie, and eject Lainey in favor of a new wife to manipulate. And the whole process will start all over again, until the day that either Greg dies, or he becomes incapable of drawing in new women. And at that point, sadly, the fact that Lainey is still a teenager - but only on the inside - will end up becoming the most painful struggle of her life, when she is forced to take on all of the adult responsibilities that Greg currently carries for her, and realizes that she is dangerously under-qualified to live her life as an adult woman instead of a pampered, permanent 16-year-old girl. 
(Sadly - or maybe luckily - I think that Lainey is the type of woman who needs to be in a relationship with someone like Greg (an inverted narcissist; in other words, a codependent), so I guess here’s to hoping that when this inevitably happens, she will quickly find herself a new narcissist to date and define her entire identity for her, I suppose?)
Press F to pay respects for this ridiculously, unnecessarily long fucking essay that I just wrote that NOBODY is going to read. Praise the Noodle Lord. Amen. 
409 notes · View notes
dxmedstudent · 6 years
Note
Have you ever had some periods in your life where you felt pressure to grow up really quickly (i.e. be in relationships etc)? I'm nearly 20 and I kinda feel that way, I really want to focus on becoming the woman I want to be and shaping the type of life I want to lead before entering any potentially heavy relationships but I feel there's this massive narrative that I would be a latebloomer/infantile. Do you have any advice?
Hello, that’s a very interesting question, so you’re probably going to get a long answer. Please bear with my waffliness, hopefully my answer will cheer you up. I think growing up is immensely difficult, because you’re going through a huge change. Now, I know we technically become adults at 18, but did any of us really feel like grownups at 18? I certainly didn’t! Even into my early 20s, I still felt like I’d just left school! It was only in my mid 20s that I fully realised I was a proper grownup. And that’s scary, because suddenly you realise it’s your life to muck up however you wish. Until then, your life is pretty much laid out for you, and you’re waiting for it to really begin. The weirdest (and most freeing) feeling I remember from that time was looking down at my body and realising “this is me. I’m not going to get any taller. I’m not going to get any skinnier, probably. I’m not going to get prettier. I’m not going to get healthier. But it’s OK.” And I realised that a lot of the things that I hadn’t liked about myself when I was a teenager weren’t so bad, after all. I was OK, and that was enough. After the tumultuous time that is our teens, your 20s is a time when you really grow into being an adult. But it takes time to really get to know yourself and what you want out of life.
It can be hard when you compare yourself to your friends. For example, I was still in university on my second degree when some of my friends had gotten jobs, moved out and bought cars. A couple had even settled down. You know, grownup stuff. Meanwhile, myself and my other grad med student friends were living in student accommodation or with our parents, doing homework, and feeling a bit like our teens had gone on for way too long. You feel financially insecure as a forever-student. And a bit left behind. I personally gave quite a few clothes and things to charity because I didn’t want to feel like I was the same person as when I was in school. We reminded ourselves that we were working on our goals. Some of my friends felt very conscious of their ages, many still do. But my motto tends to be “If I am doing something I love, then that time is not wasted. You never feel that time passing is a problem.”  So the key is to do what you love. Things that make you feel happy, and like you are advancing your life.Eventually, I moved out, got a job doctoring and stressing even more, paid bills and rent, bought a car and started worrying about planning for the future. Put more effort into looking after myself, and planning my career. And it didn’t really feel like it changed anything. I mean it did; life’s more complex and stressy when you take on “adult responsibilities” and the first year of doctorhood is like a yearlong panic attack. Bt once you get used to it, you realise that grownup life is overrated. You’ll be surprised at how not-different you feel even if you have all or most of the “grown up” milestones ticked off. The thing is, milestones such as these used to be something we hit earlier. You finished school (if you were lucky enough to study at all, not all my grandparents finished secondary school!), you got married, you had kids and settled into grownup life. Western terms, the expected order for the last few generations has been school - > university  - >job - >house - >marriage - >kids. But give the financial sitation Millenials are left with, these things don’t always work out. We’re more likely to go to university than previous generations, which tends to correlate with a delay in settling down or having kids; it’s just easier to do those things once studies are out of the way, so lots of people wait. Having a house, or a job nearby is hardly guaranteed, so we all end up renting for longer than previous generations.  You get plenty of people in the UK who are in their late 30s before they can afford to settle down in the traditional sense of the word. What I’m trying to say is that it’s not just you; our generations are acting differently, because the forces acting on our lives are different. So we have to be flexible in how we view adulthood. Most of my friends span between the mid 20s to mid 30s, with myself somewhere in the middle. By now, all of us have very different lives. Some got married young, a few have a child or two. some are in committed relationships, others are single. Actually, amongst medics I know, a lot more people are single than I ever expected. And for the most part, they are perfectly happy, with fulfilling lives. TV does not prepare you for the fact that your 20s or 30s isn’t like a romcom. Like on TV everyone just sort of meets people without any effort, and gets into longterm relationships, and everything ends happily ever after. It’s just not like that. Some of my friends have been trying so hard to be in the right relationship. For so many years. They had it all planned out; the guy, the kids, the house, all by 25. It just didn’t happen, but not for want of trying. It made me realise that there’s really no point in adding extra stress to ourselves about this, because it’s kind of outside our control. If you want to date, date, but please don’t force unnecessary arbitrary timeframes on yourself. Because feeling pressured risks settling just to get it over with. And when you know people who’ve settled or who’ve divorced by their mid 20s or early 30s it reminds you that you have to be really sure you’re in the right relationship. Getting married definitely isn’t just something to tick off your list.  But also a reminder that you can’t predict everything that will happen; I’m sure those people didn’t see t coming. So worrying too far ahead won’t help. We can only take things one step at a time and hope for the best. Just today I was having a Whatsapp coversation with my former roomates and besties about how pressure to date coming from family is frustrating, because sometimes it’s just not a priority for you. My friend, let’s call her Squirrel, to give her due credit. She said something very wise:  “ I’m really grateful to have a job that’s meaningful, and friends and interests, think if a person comes along to share that with great, but I don’t think it would be good to force it just to tick boxes.”And I think we all agreed, because we viewed dating pretty similarly. Personally,  there have been times when I have been more committed to dating (and when you like someone doesn’t it just feel like it’s all you think about? XD) , and there were times when it was literally the last thing from my mind. Just like my friend said. And that’s true for most of my friends. Like, sitcoms don’t prepare you for the fact that sometimes you’re just happy to chill and don’t really feel the need to look. And that when you do look, your reasons might not be like they are on TV. TV has a lot to answer for in how it depicts being single, especially single women.  I’m going to focus on single women who date men here, purely because the dominant narrative mostly ignores LGBT dating. Single women on TV are either bitter and angry or sad that they can’t get a man, or labelled too dysfunctional to be able to love. But in reality, people have lots of reasons for being single, just as they have lots of reasons for being in relationships. The more stuff you go through, and the more your friends go through, the more you realise it’s nothing like TV. Being single, dating, being in a longterm relationship; all of these can be either happy and content, or miserable depending on the circumstances in your life at that time. Sometimes we feel the need for companionship, and there’s no harm in meeting new people and seeing if anyone clicks; I’m not here to denigrate dating, or “looking for the one”, or wanting some casual fun. If it’s what you want to do, and many of us do.  If you want to meet someone, then logically, you have to make an effort at some point. If you don’t feel the need for it right now, then you don’t have to do it right now. I promise you as someone who has spent a lot of time single, for the most part nobody cares. The older you get, the more you realise that people aren’t overly invested in what you do, not even your friends. Sure, I’m ecstatic if my friend is dating someone she likes, and I’l be the first to cry at a wedding (God I love weddings. The merest hint of my friends actually being happy makes me weak). But does it actually affect me if they are single; no, we just chill together. And if they have a cool guy, then we chill together in a group. Our teenage years are so full of judgement (like, I, a grown woman, still have hangups about music of all things, because of teenage girls), but when you reach adulthood and you get out of the claustrophobic school environment, you realise other people don’t really care as much as you feared they would. Any ‘friend’ who does judge you for being single is not a great friend. But I promise, they will be few and far between.  I will grant you that family pressure can be real; my friends and I were discussing this in the context of parents wanting have grandchildren. Some of my relatives are incredibly pushy about the issue, offering to set me up with randoms they’ve picked out (er… no thanks) and generally constantly asking me about when I’ll get married, even at the most inopportune times imaginable. Like, they can be ridiculous. So I’ve NEVER told them ANYTHING about my dating life. I just smile and say “We’ll see.” and wonder to myself if they’d even get invited if I get married. People tend to view the age of 30 (or 25) as a kind of deadline by which to have achieved all your dreams. It really isn’t! So go for what you want to do now, and just remember to evaluate your priorities once in a while. These are my simple rules:1) don’t leave anything you value as essential in last place.  2) You choose what is important to you. 3) The order of priorities can change at any time; go with your heart. 4) don’t wait til everything is perfect in your life, in order to do the things you want to do.  Because it’s easy to get wrapped up and not realise that what you want has changed. If you ever feel that being in a relationship or having kids has become more important, then bring it up a few levels in priority.  Now, we all know that there’s a sort-of time limit on having kids, but 20 is not it. So if it’s something you really want, then don’t leave it til your late 30s to start dating. But otherwise, just do what you want to do now. If you want companionship, just see where meeting people for fun goes. If you would rather focus on work, then do that. But remember that if kids or a relationship are really important to you, you may have to prioritise them eventually, in order to stand a chance at having them happen. For some people they are an extra. For some they are essential. For some, they are the last thing they want! Only you know how much things matter to you.Think about what you want out of life, and take little steps towards achieving it bit by bit. As long as you’re working towards the goals that you value, then your life will be an interesting journey that you’ll enjoy along the way. I hope your journey is awesome  :)
11 notes · View notes