Teela Hudak

We all want to be considered attractive and awesome. It’s common to want people to look at you in a good light and this desire is amplified for the people that we admire. We want the attraction we feel to a person be returned. Sadly, this isn’t always the case. Rejection can feel pretty crummy! There are things we can do to help us remove the sting of rejection but there are also things we can do to try to take it more gracefully. That way, if we are rejected by our love interest, we can still shoot for the second-best-case scenario. A scenario that may not be possible if we are to take the rejection poorly.

Have you ever heard the term safeword? It’s a common term in kinky and BDSM circles. It’s a way to communicate consent in ways other than using terms like, “no” or “stop”. The safeword system is a word or set of words that are agreed upon before engaging in sexual activity or entering the kink play scene. These words are used to signal that the scene is getting too intense or unwanted harm is likely to happen. It can be a great way to quickly check-in with your partner and make sure everything is still going well for them.

For many of us, it’s hard to witness suffering, particularly if it’s someone we love. Some kinds of emotional blackmailers take advantage of that and use it to manipulate us to their will. Enter the suffering emotional blackmailer. This type of emotional blackmailer really focuses on feeling miserable. They can seem sick, unhappy, or just plain unlucky but the only remedy they see is for us to give in to their will. If someone resists this, it quickly becomes apparent that their suffering is our fault. We are made to feel like the sole cause of their pain and discomfort and all because we said no or set a boundary.

Who would use the threat of self-punishment to get what they want? The truth is many people have tried it in various forms. Have you ever seen a kid in the middle of a tantrum who’s threatened to hold their breath until they turn blue unless the parent gives in? Did you ever do that as a kid? Most people have done this, experienced it, or both throughout their lives. The blue-faced threat is a very simple and obvious example of a self-punishing threat an emotional blackmailer would use. The threats used by an adult engaging in self-punishing emotional blackmail tend to be much more sophisticated but the foundational principle is the same. You give in to their demands or grave harm will befall them… and it will be your fault!

Out of all the different types, the tantalizing emotional blackmailer is the most subtle. This type of abuser manipulates through the use of promises of great rewards for jumping through their hoops. The rewards can be anything from promises of money, career advancements, material possessions, or even the promise of their undivided attention, acceptance, and love. They will sometimes buffer this by making smaller concessions that are easy for them in order to keep the promise of the real prize feel like it’s within grasp. Whatever carrot the tantalizing emotional blackmailer dangles is something their victim never gets anywhere actually near. Instead, the victim jumps through a series of hoops and challenges to prove their worthiness, often without even realizing they are being emotionally blackmailed.

Menstruation, commonly referred to as a period, is a part of the fertility process for vulvas. Once a cycle, the lining of the uterus prepares the possibility of pregnancy by filling the lining with thick and rich blood vessels. This rich lining provides support to a fertilized egg to begin growing into a fetus.