Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 3

codemonkey

Lambyr - I know its easy for me to say but I'm going to be utterly, utterly frank here.

If you throw away what you have with E over what some people with no business having an opinion over who you can and can't love, then you're a total muppet and I will lose all respect for you.

You can't change the way other people think and act but you can control how you react to it. Screw them. It's your life and anyone who can't accept who you are is not worth your time.

I suspect you have some residual feeling that what you are doing and what you are is wrong and that's why you feel attacked. That is what you need to work on.

tea_lover

Code - can I please come and live with you?? Feel absolutely sickened today.

whitewing

I voted remain but will accept what has happened, but I do feel sad about Cameron quitting as I don't think the others are up to much.

Lambyr, I feel even more sad reading your post. I am pro-loving relationships - they are a gift, and I agree with code that you would be a muppet (albeit a very loveable muppet) if you allow your current panic to stop your relationship with E. Please at least wait until Article 50 (formal leave process beginning) before you do any kneejerk reaction. Nothing needs to be decided right away. Things may be different going forward but people will adapt to changes and I still believe that humans are essentially good and that kindness is a choice.

Lambyr

PENGUIN reply (politics, lesbianism, possibly other things, I dunno I'm pretty sleep-deprived and slightly drunk)
It's not about what the likes of Nigel and his cronies think. The only reason I give a crap what my family thinks is because they could give my mum grief for it. Take mum out of the equation and they can jog on.

Yeah, I don't like bigots but I'm quite comfortable now that there is nothing wrong or unnatural about what I am and even if there was, I wouldn't actually care. There's people out there with far worse proclivities than me.

In this case, it's about pragmatism.

I don't wanna live in this country any more. This referendum has accomplished one thing - to give me a grand purpose and that is to leave this island and never return to it. I'm actually so enthralled with this that I've already looked at renouncing my British nationality.

I need to find somewhere else first though because UN laws forbid a person from being stateless. I probably eligible to get another nation's passport, but that particular nation is actually worse than ours and pretty corrupt.

For the time being I am still stuck here. Someone's gotta care for my mum, and I don't trust anyone else but me to do that. I give it about five years before my mother succumbs to her ailments. Not a nice thought but you have to be realistic about these things.

I've got no right though to ask E to come with me. Her family is here, and she likes them. Her job is here, and she seems to like that too. Her friends are here. Everything's here.

This is where we reach a bit of an impasse.

I could stay here to be with her and be absolutely miserable to the point where she'd be better off without me anyway, or I could be cruel and lead her along for up to five years before vanishing into the nether.

At the moment I've got no plan but that in itself isn't an issue. My issue has always been motivation... it comes and goes but when I'm motivated I don't fail at things.

I wanted to learn kickboxing. I learned it. I won tournaments. I was good at it. And I'm probably still good enough to give the average homophobe a little lesson in etiquette.

I wanted to be on the hockey team. I ended up captaining that team.

I wanted a degree. I have two. Both of them First Class Honours. Only reason I don't have a masters is because I can't afford it. I'll have a third degree in a couple of years and I promised myself I will get a First Class Honours in that too. So far, so good on that one.

At nine years old I wanted to learn how to build an application in BASIC. I did. It was a little encyclopedia sort of thing about dinosaurs. You'd cycle through pages of information, and then get a little quiz at the end of each section.

Now all this sounds like I'm rather arrogant (which may not be too far from the truth) but the point of this barely coherent sleep-deprived babble is, if I'm motivated to do something I will do it. I built a website last week in six hours or whatever it was because I had the burst of motivation to do it. It's not the fanciest website ever but I have got a 98% PageSpeed score and a 95% YSlow score on GTMetrix, so from a design point of view it's very well done.

So the question is really what do I do? Lead E on for several years which would be selfish, or ask her to come with me which would be selfish, or don't go and stay in a country that I do not feel is compatible with my personal values and if I'm honest has never done a thing anyway to make me feel welcome or appreciated, thus ruining our relationship anyway because I'd be unhappy and as you can tell, I'm a bit of a cow when I'm unhappy?

Right now I can't win - which is why I said I need to have a think about this. I need to figure out how I'm going to achieve what I want and if I can do this without losing her.
END

tea_lover

What you do is talk to her xxx

whitewing

Lambyr,

Why do you have to decide everything immediately?

Go with the flow for a bit.

You are an intelligent, hardworking, capable lady. Trust that you will make appropriate decisions at the appropriate time. You don't have to make all these decisions right now. Personally, I think you are worried about the change and therefore you are trying to control your fears.

I hope you can get some sleep and that you feel calmer soon (even if feeling calmer means making the same decisions).

I'd be gutted if my husband said he couldn't stay married to me now the country has voted leave.

Lambyr

It's not just the change. Yes, I openly admit I am absolutely terrified about what this means for me as a carer. The media have done a fantastic job over the years of making all benefit claimants look like dole-dossing wasters, who sit in their front gardens swigging White Lighting from the bottle, grunting at each other and occasionally harassing a pensioner.

To the average person out there, we're nothing but leeches, milking the state for all its got while living the life of Riley so when the austerity axe comes chopping through benefits again, nobody is going to speak up for me and try and stop them because I'll be lumped in with Josie Cunningham and people like that.

But it goes deeper than those fears. Much deeper, to stuff that I definitely should not be talking about here.

Pyxis

Penguin touching lightly on politics.....


Lambyr, I was going to stay away from MSE today, and hide under my duvet all day, crying my eyes out, but I had to come and respond to you being so sad.

What is keeping me going is the fact that, far from being alone, I have virtually half the voting public agreeing with me. It's just sad that that half wasn't quite a big enough half. So half the country are with you, too. Hold onto that thought.

Of the half that wanted out, how many are seriously homophobic? I would say that it is a very small percentage. Probably the same percentage also exists with the half that wanted to stay in. So try not to confuse the issues here.

Nothing much is going to happen in the short term. There's a long way to go yet. That gives you a breathing space. Plus, you have your mum to look after, so that's another breathing space.

My gut reaction was, "where can I go?" like you. But where would I go? Without knowing another country thoroughly, inside and out, it would most likely be, at best, out of the frying pan into the fire, and at best, a worse situation on other levels.

(A&NZ springs to mind, but I've never been there, and I bet they have their own nightmares too!)

So you have a breathing space of several years. Yes, you do need to discuss all this with E. That is what a loving relationship is all about, including the sharing of fears and worries. You are blessed in that respect, you know, as you have each other and you can work it out together.

I wish I had that, but I don't, so am caught up in the worry without being able to share it. However, I do know that the last thing I should do is act rashly. Who knows how this will pan out? I can only bide my time and see.

You are not alone: you have E, your mum, us and almost half of the country! :A

Pyxis

Another point, Lambyr is this.....

I can't remember where you live. However, it could well be that a lot of the problems you've been experiencing may be due to your location.

It may be that, in time, relocating to another part of the UK might fit the bill for you. To an area where the people have a different mindset to the one you've been encountering.

That could even be something you could do with your mum, if she were willing. And that might be something that E might be willing to consider, too!
I'm not talking about right this minute, obviously, but something to consider for the future.

Torry_Quine

Like many I feel very unsettled today. Talk of another Scottish referendum doesn't help.