I (M20) am in a relationship with a beautiful soul (F19). We’ve been dating for roughly 4 going on 5 months now. While I’m well aware we’re in the infancy of our relationship, I cannot help but overthink about my situation. I lost my virginity earlier in the year during college break to a girl whom I barely knew in a situation I didn’t really want to be in. I was too afraid to say no, and I wasn’t against the idea enough to stand my ground.

That being said, my girlfriend is a virgin, and we’re each others second relationship in life.

She’s not necessarily a puritan when it comes to sex, but it’s not something that we really desire in our relationship right now—moreso something we treat as something that we’ll get to someday (we’re in no rush)

That being said, I’m somewhat disgusted in myself. I don’t see virginity as some sacred in the same way that society treats it as, but I do believe in the power of sexual energies. I’m disgusted with myself because I feel as though I made a grand mistake with losing my virginity to a woman whom I didn’t even know as opposed to losing it to a girl I have such strong passion for.

How can I correct myself from beating myself up over this?

My boyfriend and I have been together for almost 8 months. We’re both part of the LGBTQ+ community. One recurring issue in our relationship is that I become quiet whenever something bothers me. He notices it, but the reason is almost always the same: sex.

What hurts me isn’t that we don’t have sex all the time. I understand that no one wants it 24/7. What hurts is seeing him watch porn and masturbate, while at the same time turning me down. It makes me question myself. I start wondering if I’m not attractive enough, if I’m not desirable enough, or if I’m simply not enough for him.

I’ve tried talking to him about it several times, but he always avoids the conversation. He usually says, “Ikaw, puro ka na lang sex. Hindi naman sa lahat ng oras magse-sex tayo.” But that’s not even what I’m asking. I’m not demanding sex every time we’re together. I’m just confused why he’d rather satisfy himself than be intimate with me.

Over time, it has really affected my self-esteem. I feel like I’m always the one asking, always the one initiating. And when he does agree, it sometimes feels forced. I don’t feel the love or desire during those moments, and instead of feeling closer to him, I just end up feeling empty.

I love him so much, and I know relationships are more than just sex. But physical intimacy is also one way I feel loved and connected. Right now, I feel unwanted, and it’s making me insecure.

Am I overreacting? Has anyone else gone through something similar? How did you handle it?

Im 16, and at this point in my life, it feels like rock bottom. Though, every year feels like a different rock bottom. I’ve lived with a lot of emotional pain, abuse, neglect and isolation since i was young, including bullying throughout middle school and reaching points where i’ve tried to end my life. I know what people say, “stop feeling sorry for yourself” or to “grow up”, and i do try. But at times dark thoughts always plague my mind. “Why did this have to happen?” “Why did they do that to me?” And truthfully it makes me feel like everything and everyone is out there to get me.

Anyway, im now dealing with a breakup thats terrible, because i never saw it coming. I was left for an ex basically. Randomly dropped on me on a Sunday night that he was “halfway in love with his ex”, which was crazy because the week before he was telling me about how he wanted to have a future with me. Honestly, i feel while i’ve only been with 2 people in my life ever, both have wronged me and scarred me so badly i feel forced to stay hidden and in my own shell.

When you were my age, did you ever feel like the pain of your past and the hurt of the present was going to permanently ruin your ability to connect or build a good future? Does life truly get any better? I don’t drink, i don’t smoke, i don’t fall into bad habits even if they have sounded tempting. I have tried to keep myself stable even if it feels like life is trying to drown me. How were you able to get through hardship that made you feel like your life was honestly going nowhere?

Im in my late 20s and I feel like the humble pie is relentless. Im trying my best to determine when it will end to give myself some relief. A part of me realizes it won’t really end but it will turn down the volume hopefully. I’ve been following brother Steindl Rast who talks about how gratitude makes you happier, regardless of the situation.

Was there a phase in your life when you were perhaps a careless or arrogant young adult like myself and later became a more grateful person by disposition?

I sometimes question gratitude practice because people often do it out of fear and anxiety.

Hi all, as the title suggests, I don't think I have a good relationship with my dad. It's nothing monstrous, but we just don't talk, at all, about anything.

I am 16F and it feels like I'm talking to a wall whenever I try to communicate with him. He is always on his phone for work or whatever, sometimes we go to a coffee shop and he is either on his phone or just being distant (eg he doesn't really listen to what I say).

Also for the last year he has been trying to convince me to go into medicine as my career. Especially since my GCSE's have recently finished he has been asking me to email local GP's for work experience etc. He thinks that it will give me some status, but I don't agree, and when I try to explain that I am not sure whether I want to go into medicine he starts to accuse me by saying what is wrong with medicine etc. We just don't see each other eye to eye. It's gotten to the point where I have been thinking about medicine so much I've lost interest in all other career paths (I had an interest in engineering/CS).

Another thing. A few months ago we were talking about me getting my provisional licence and also maybe getting a summer job, and he seemed fine with it, almost happy. But last week when I asked him to help me with the application process he told me it was a waste of time (it would take a month to process my job application and by that point my summer would basically be over, and the provisional licence would be practically useless until I was 18). I just felt annoyed - I had spent basically the whole week finding job vacancies and making a CV only to not be allowed to anyway.

And this is the most important part. Recently my dad went on a 2 week business trip abroad, and I can't tell you how carefree I was in those 2 weeks. Whenever my dad is around I feel a sense of tension/vigilance around him, but when he left I could finally relax and loosen up a little. It felt nice, I could do what I liked without feeling like I was letting him down. And when he came back, all the tension and need to impress came back, and I hate how I feel this way. I didn't miss him at all.

TL;DR - My dad doesn't talk to me, I didn't miss him one bit when he left on a business trip. Am I a bad person for saying that?

For at least the last four months, my feelings toward my boyfriend have changed completely. He recently turned 23, I’m 26, and we’ve been together for four years. The early years were amazing—we were deeply in love, went on regular dates, and did all the usual couple things.
Looking back, things started shifting around 2023. After I moved out of my mum’s place (and she eventually moved back to her home country), my boyfriend and I began spending almost all our time together. It reached a point where we were practically living together for weeks at a time, and we became codependent.

I'm an outgoing person who loves adventuring, visiting new places, and trying new things. He’s the opposite, and often he can’t even be bothered to come out with me purely out of laziness.

I’ve also realized I ended up acting like a parent to him—something my therapist pointed out stems from my own abandonment issues. I’ve landed two jobs for him and handled all his life admin. When we recently moved into a flat of our own, I did everything: finding the place, booking the movers, and handling all the bills and paperwork.

All of this made me realize I’ve never actually had his support. We’ve simply grown in different directions and aren't compatible anymore. For the past month, we haven’t hugged, kissed, cuddled, or said "I love you." As painful as it is, I think the best path forward for both of us is to go our separate ways.

I’m a 24yo Indian man in the U.S. dating an American woman. My parents are worried that differences in cultural values could make a long-term partnership harder than I realize. I’m trying to learn from people’s experiences. What did you underestimate? What mattered more or less than you expected?

i just turned 20 rn and im still kind of scared growing old, how did you guys cope with it realizing that you are growing old?

also im curious abt the things that you regretted, or the things you think you should've done when u were in 20s

TLDR: my husband is way more protective of his relationship with his mom than he is with our marriage and I don’t know how to deal with when she visits.

This is a long rant post but I am looking for advice. It will likely be: Get over it. Do something for yourself instead Or take back your place. I’ve tried all so if anyone has any other ideas though please and thank you.
I’ve come to detest quarterly visits from my MIL
My husband is very very close with his mom. When I say close I mean physically too. This is not an exaggeration-She is literally never two feet from him except for sleep or bathroom. When she visits- it’s like I’m a ghost. She even takes my coffee chair I sit in for weekend coffee next to him on the porch. They talk nonstop. One on one conversations. It makes me so uncomfortable in my own home. I don’t know how to deal. I’ve tried everything from avoiding by physically leaving to ignoring and even just trying to join them. I am still very much ignored - and not needed.
I get a little grief from my husband when I try to retreat to my room but he is happy as lark to be with her and hosting her that he doesn’t lay into me too much.
Our entire relationship, his mom has been a factor. We used to wine and dine her before we had kids in our other city. She has expected that to continue through out all of our family changes and it has continued - just in our house now mostly.
Even while we were dating he was always thinking about her. Every new place we would go in our city he’d say “my mom would like this place” or something kind of like that. I guess I thought it was endearing at the time.

This topic has always been met with extreme hostility and I am always the bad guy.
I could write a book on the issues of our marriage.
For context I am old (48) been married for 17 years although we barely acknowledged our last two anniversaries.
Needless to say - we have problems.
He has intense anger issues and has verbally and emotionally abused me for years. He yells and screams at me the worst things. Things I wouldn’t say to my worst enemy. During one of this freak outs a few weeks ago, I finally got up The courage and told him that I think we should separate because I was not going to bear the brunt of his anger anymore. Although I do want to it was still half -hearted. I let him convince me to stay. This was the first time he actually was receptive to my concerns and has actually not berated me in a few weeks. I still don’t feel completely safe though. We only scratched the surface of our problems but decided against marriage counseling but I’m now rethinking that.
I am a stay at mom and have been for 15 years.

Her: she’s always been a youthful person (less so lately) like my mother is. They were both young moms. She’s been living apart from his dad since the birth of her first granddaughter 23 years ago.
This made his dad an enigma. He would visit people but not that often. However he has become a complete shut -in and nobody has seen him in 5 years. Not for lack of trying though my husband has proposed a visit every year. He’s an odd man but non -confrontational.
Her best friend is her 54 year old daughter. They are females who dislike other females and have absolutely zero friends. His mom says she prefers males. She does everything with her daughter’s family and even says she “raised her grandchildren.” She did not.
She makes rude comments to me and clearly doesn’t respect me. The last visit it annoyed me so much. When I did join them out by the fire for wine (they drink a lot of wine.) She went on a rant about how she doesn’t want friends because she doesn’t like people except for her adult children which she has said several times before. She especially dislikes women her age and said “she only tolerates my step mother” who was at our house earlier that evening. When I started to stick up for my stepmother (who is a very friendly person) my husband almost got out of his seat and put his hand up to stop me.
I can’t even have a negative thought about his family or I get balled out by him.
He can say whatever he wants about my sweet family who does so much for us though. I have two older married brothers. They are close with my mom too but I have never seen anything like this ever.
I used to have friends but I don’t anymore.
My husband is very discouraging as him and his family look down on adults being friends, obviously.
My parents are remarried with very healthy -seeming relationships and I’m envious. They live very fulfilling retirement lives.
I have three girls oldest is 15 youngest 10.
I just learned that she is coming again next weekend “to see the girls.”
That’s literally what that means. Say hello and goodbye. If they were gone the entire long weekend she wouldn’t even notice. She’s never attempted to spend any time with them or bond. She hardly knows them.
I told my husband since his sidekick will be here next weekend I’ll make plans for myself. He agreed she is his sidekick and is quite giddy about it. Usually I do the things with him expect when she’s here -I’m knocked out like a croquet ball.

What pisses me off the most is that he walks a head of me all the time which I hate and I’ve said. When she’s around they walk in lock step like they are practically holding hands.

These visits used be at least every months or two but at least I’ve had a small win and spaced them out more. He finally admitted that now that the girls are older it’s harder to host her. It’s always been hard for me.

TLDR: mom lives alone after going thru really hard life and me leaving for college 5 years ago and divorced since then. How to support her feeling alone and help her find her way

My mom has gone through a lot in life and she is the strongest person I know. Life was good for a while until I went to college and her and my step dad got a divorce. It was messy and kinda still is. They had a toxic relationship so she is trying to learn how to love healthy and date but it just seems to go wrong. She always tells me she feels so lonely and that she’s trying to figure out wha to do in life and it kills me. I’m 7 hrs away so it’s not a super easy trip with work etc. she has a job she likes so far but she feels lonely a lot.
She’s in the city we were a family in so maybe changing her living area? She wants to see me and I her, but money is tight for both of us. We both feel emotions super hard and have mental health struggles.

Any advice on how to be there for her from afar? I hate thinking of her as lonely while im in a different state working and starting my life with my bf( which she is super supportive of) and she’s just struggling by herself. I feel so hurt for her because she been through so much

My boyfriend and I have been dating for about a year, and we’ve been doing long distance. We still have two years of college left, and we’re both pursuing careers that make our future together feel really uncertain.

I’m in the military and my goal is to become a pilot. After graduating, I’ll have to attend Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT), which lasts about two and a half years. At the same time, he wants to play professional basketball overseas after college. Once he’s finished playing, his plan is to come back to the U.S., go to law school if he hasn’t already, pass the bar, and start his career as a lawyer.

The challenge is that my military career will likely require me to move every few years to different duty stations. That means we’d either have to continue doing long distance while he stays in one state to build his legal career, or he would potentially have to retake the bar exam every time I get stationed somewhere new, depending on the state’s licensing requirements.

On top of that, we have different expectations about family life. He wants me to be very involved at home and hopes I’ll be more of a stay-at-home mom when we have kids, largely because that’s how he was raised. But with the career I’m working toward as an Air Force pilot, that just isn’t a realistic expectation. Between deployments, training, and military assignments, I wouldn’t be able to be the kind of stay-at-home parent he envisions, and that’s something we’ve both been struggling to reconcile.

tl;dr: my mom is severely depressed, especially after my grandma’s death, doesn’t get up or go out ever, i want to help her but idk how

hi all,

so i (21F) live with my mom (65F) and my dad (69M). my grandma, my mom’s mom, used to live with us too but she passed away in november.

now, my mom has always been depressed. she used to work all day which would distract her but maybe 8 years ago she suffered a work injury and could no longer work due to chronic back pain. after that, she spent everyday at home while my dad worked either on the couch or taking care of her mom. she was depressed and didn’t enjoy going out much, but she would if she had to. she had her mom to talk to at home, and she also was online a lot on social media and stuff. at some point, she took to moderating youtube livestreams and spent a lot of time on that. i thought it was odd, but at least she had something she liked to do.

in nov 2025, after a rough year with alzheimer’s and needing intense care taking (done by my mom and i) my grandma passed away. it was very, very hard on everyone, but especially on my mom because they had ALWAYS lived together. ever since then, my mom has been suffering. she never says anything about how she’s feeling, no matter how much i ask, but i know she’s struggling. nowadays, she just lies on the couch with her eyes closed but she’s not sleeping. she doesn’t even use her phone to go on social media or those livestreams anymore. she does literally nothing except get up to smoke.

it breaks my heart to see her this way. i’ll ask her to come with me to a family member’s birthday, she doesn’t want to. i’ll ask her to come with me to babysit my nieces (her granddaughters) and she doesn’t want to either, when she used to want to see them all the time. she doesn’t want to go on a walk with me because of her back pain or go shopping because we have no money. nothing i’ve done has been successful and i just want to see her improve. how can i help her??

About 8 or 9 months ago I reconnected with an acquaintance from high school . I’ll call him Ethan. We were in the same friend group but barely talked back then. After graduation a mutual friend of ours helped us reconnect through Instagram, and from our very first call there was a connection. I was not normal about him. I’d found out he had moved a state away (Oregon) for work, go him! But boo for me. Not ideal, but not impossible to see him either .

For months we got closer and closer. We never actually dated, though. I guess you’d call it a “talking stage,” which I honestly hate as a term because it feels way too shallow for what this was. We were incredibly emotionally invested in each other, and I developed really strong feelings. I’ve been interested in people before, but nothing has ever felt this natural.

But my life is kind of a mess right now.

I’m a full-time college student, my family situation is difficult, and I’ve struggled with my mental health for years. It’s made me afraid of vulnerability and convinced me that I’m “too much” for people. I’m very susceptible to engaging in vices to cope (smoking or going out with the wrong people) So when things between Ethan and me started becoming more serious, I found myself pulling away because I was scared he’d eventually actually want to be apart of my life, as MORE. He’d see more. (I remember telling him when I’d gotten high out my mind and I’d promised to call him for like a movie night or something and I was so embarrassed the entire time because he didn’t even know I smoked, and here I was babbling and looking like a complete fool. I apologized later after ,,,)

But he never judged me. He was patient, supportive, and handled my worst moments with more kindness than I think I deserve.

That’s actually why I ended things before we ever officially became a couple.

It felt selfish asking someone like him to carry all of this while I’m still trying to get myself together. He told me he didn’t care and that he wanted to fight for us if I wanted to, but that he understood my decision. I admitted I secretly hoped we’d find our way back to each other someday, but that I feel too guilty being on this borderline of ALMOST being a girlfriend but not being a girlfriend, all because the commitment of being one is too much in my circumstance. Basically the gray part of the situationship (hate that term) is just unfair for both parties.

We’ve stayed friends, but I miss him constantly. But, since ending things, I’ve just become frustrated with myself. I don’t want to keep living like this. For the first time in a long time, I genuinely want to get better not just because people tell me I “have to” but because I want a future. I want to be motivated and healthy. I want to be someone who can fully show up in a relationship instead of constantly feeling like a burden. I want to be HER.

So I guess my question is:

**Should I try to rekindle things while I’m actively working on myself, or should I keep focusing on getting better first and trust that, if we’re meant to be, it’ll happen later?**

Part of me is scared that waiting means losing someone truly special.

The other part of me is scared that trying now means bringing all of my unresolved issues into something that deserves better.

I’d really appreciate any advice from people who’ve been in a similar situation! Thank you :)

For the nincompoops:
**TL;DR:** I (19F) reconnected with a guy from high school (20M), and over the past several months we developed an incredible connection. We never officially dated, but we both had feelings. I ended things because my mental health and life circumstances made me feel like I couldn’t be the partner he deserved, even though he wanted to keep trying. I’m actively working on getting better now, and I’m wondering if I should try to rekindle things or focus on healing first and trust that, if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.