Little King

Been seeing some posts circulating about popular websites/apps and wanted to make my own version. These are apps I’m way too addicted to. Am I missing any?

Edit: Sorry for all the time I’ve taken away from your life.

Love Nikki- my favorite dress-up game

CharacterHub- make beautiful wikis for your characters and art

Date My Music by the Shelf app- find out how dateable you are based on your Spotify

Hangout.fm- music with your friends, ultimate music discovery engine

Ellipsus- because f*ck google docs

Hinge Cheater - check if your boyfriend is still on Hinge

Shroomy - Therapy but from a talking mushroom

Party In My Dorm - college simulation game!

Terrarium - build the ultimate garden empire

Rise - really helpful self-care sleep routine

Breathwrk - this app will help you get rid of social anxiety

Phone Case DIY - design your phone case

Idle Human - build a human from scratch. for reals.

Pocket Styler - build a dream closet you want

Stadium Live - sports, games, and friends - all in one

Dragon Mania Legends - breed the cutest dragons

Sweatcoin - you can literally walk and get paid

BitLife - a life simulator

Fabulous - best daily routine planner

But one of the things that's come out of it is that this situation combined with my near pathological optimism that I can figure it out to some degree means I have tried all of the advice out there for being a relationship with someone with treatment resistant NPD and ASPD/Psychopathy specifically and then some.

So if that sounds useful to you, let's chat.

Grey rocking - the near universal standard I see recommended everywhere - fucking blows. It's non-specific so it's difficult to know what you should be doing in any given situation, is mentally and emotionally draining, and can escalate the folks who have high impulsivity. I hate it.

The strategy that I return to time and time again, the only one that tends to stabilize things to any degree is called SMART contact from Marriage Helper. It's designed for people who are separated, in the process of divorcing, or similar who would like to reconcile. But it is so useful for high conflict relationships in general.

SMART is an acronym. It stands for:

Stop PUSH* behaviors

Manage shared business

Allow them to start conversations

Respond calm, strong, and gentle.

Take it one day at a time

PUSH is also an acronym. It stands for:

Pleading, begging, manipulating

Unnecessary crying

Starting fights

Hovering, tracking, monitoring

Basically "drama".

Consistently when things have started to get bad again in my relationship, I've realized I've stopped using this framework. Other techniques - like Dr. Ramani's DEEP technique (Don't defend, engage, explain, personalize) - make decent additions for the "Allow them to start conversations" part but without the other parts of the framework, it just doesn't work as well.

I prefer SMART over grey rocking for a few reasons but one in particular, is that while grey rocking can be quite nuanced, most of the examples I see get used ultimately involve not pushing back/letting the high conflict person do whatever they want in most regards. Dr. Ramani often talks about how you're already getting walked all over, the goal is to reduce the length of the walk over. And I personally am never going to feel safe, comfortable, or mentally resilient enough to spend the rest of my life being a better and better doormat.

I think if you've got solid friendships and relationships outside of that person, maybe grey rocking with just them wouldn't destroy you but if you're highly isolated like I am, I just have found that it makes me incredibly suicidal over the long term.

SMART doesn't seem to have the same impact on me. It doesn't require me to lack human emotions. It acknowledges that I will have to go out of my way to interact with her on occasion (to manage business items) and that that serves a purpose. It reminds me to focus on today to hem in eternity thinking which I find is far more damaging to me than say personalization alone. It also gives instructions for how to broach boundaries when I need to "calm, strong, and gentle".

And additional aspect of Marriage Helper's materials is what to focus on instead of fixating on the problem partner - another acronym called PIES. They use it to denote areas of attractiveness but I use it to remember my own needs that I often neglect or sacrifice to focus on conflicts with her.

PIES stands for:

Physical

Intellectual

Emotional

Spiritual

With SMART, PUSH, and PIES - I've got most of the daily ins and outs of living her covered. Is she rage baiting me? Respond calm, strong, and gentle/don't use PUSH behaviors. Has something broken around the house? Focus on managing the problem with her. Am I unsure if I should text her about something? Well if it's not about a shared business item then it's probably best to let it go or tell someone else. I feel a need to go do something? Work on my PIES.

Grey rocking doesn't cover nearly the same breadth in my opinion.

Once again: