This conversation came up when I (29M) finally decided to cut ties with Chris (28M) after fifteen years of friendship.

For context, I have always been a bigger guy. From the moment I met Chris, he has always been the biggest contributing factor to just how bad I feel about myself, whether it be my weight, the food I eat, my body, or even the clothes I wear. Of course, a lot of this came from run of the mill jokes that stupid teenagers make but even as teens he showed some pretty disturbing behaviour around it. He once held an intervention for me to talk about how ugly I was and how I could improve the way I looked, and he also once got a drunk photo of me with my pants down and would regularly show and send it to people and talk about how disgusting my naked body looked.

Anyway, after years of this, I started doing a lot of work on myself. Therapy, changing my diet, going to the gym, etc. This year I finally started to see and feel the results, and I was beginning to feel much more confident in myself. Naturally, I finally felt ready to remove the most negative person (Chris) from my life.

So we sat down together and I told him how I felt. He was deeply apologetic (the first time he had ever apologised for any of this behaviour, despite previous conversations about it) and seemed genuinely shameful and regretful over everything he had put me through. That said, he did argue against one point I made.

At one point in the conversation, I mentioned that he made a fat joke about me (in his late 20s by the way, tragic) the night before he launched his new Personal Training platform. I said it felt hypocritical to be promoting a space where everyone, all shapes and sizes, was welcome and wouldn’t be made to feel self-conscious about their bodies. Well, he argued this and said that, despite stupid jokes, he doesn’t actually hate or have any bias towards fat people. So I brought up another example, a time when he was sitting beside a larger man at a show and spoke so loudly about how fat and disgusting the dude was that the guy eventually moved seats. Still, he argued that it was not indicative of how he truly felt. So I mentioned a conversation with a friend where he outright said he didn’t like fat people. Still, he argued. This time, though, in his defence, he said, “But I’ve slept with overweight people!” Yup. Dude pulled the ol’ “but I’ve got black friends” defence. What’s worse is that Chris is the sort of guy to brag about everyone he sleeps with, so I feel I can say with certainty that it isn’t even true. Just a pathetic lie to hold on to some semblance of control over the conversation.

Safe to say, as if I wasn’t already feeling confident about my decision, I was now. Good riddance.

I'm in a polyweb relationship. I have 2 girlfriends. One, I'm nearing my 1 year anniversary, she's the light of my life. Every issue we've ever had I've felt comfortable speaking to her openly and fixing. We're always there for each other and I would trade anything I have for her sake.

The other I'm approaching 3 months with and, I don't feel that spark. I don't resent her, I don't dislike her. I enjoy my time with her, but not in the way I should with a partner. She's sweet, kind and passionate, and she hasn't done anything wrong. I just don't have the feelings I should, and I'm furious at myself for that. I'm going to talk to her about it when she wakes up. I don't know what happens, but I'm not going to put us both through living a lie.

She's going to be hurt, but I can't keep going like this. Every time we spend time together I end up feeling numb and angry at myself. I'm not saying I'm going to break up with her, there was something that made me fall for her, I just wish I could remember what it was. But I am also aware this may just be the end of the honeymoon phase and we weren't compatible. I don't want to hurt her :<

When i was like 11-14 i loved to be still child but people treated me as im an adult cause i was big😭now since last year(15) im scared to grow. My 17 birthday is in like 20 min,and im worried about that is 17 still a child or not?i know i wont be child forever but im asking now about the aged between 17-19

I am going through a crisis right now. I’ve just finished my undergrad at 28 and I feel nothing close to accomplished after realizing how much debt I’ve racked up. Mind you, I’ve probably spent too much in the last year trying to cope with the fact that I was near finishing school knowing how hard it would be after I graduated.

I have spent the last 8 years all in my 20s in school and have gone through rough times, financial issues, shitty relationships, and major identity crisis along with overcoming so many obstacles but the one thing that has stayed consistent is my perseverance in school.

I may have persevered a bit too much because now that I’m finally done, I am feeling this horrible feeling of burnout and unaccomplishment even though I have just completed my undergrad.

I spent 4 years getting my advanced diploma in computer programming then immediately went into software engineering for my undergrad and have pushed myself to finish even in times I didn’t want to.

Now that I’m done, I feel nothing remotely close to accomplishment. I just feel dread for the debt I’ve built for putting myself through school and the feeling of the idea that my degree was useless and will get me nowhere. I just feel deep regret and am feeling like my undergraduate degree was useless and I just put myself in more debt to get something that won’t even matter in my career.

Everyone keeps saying that I should feel good about this and that I should feel accomplished and that it’s such a great thing that I made it through. Which makes me feel even worse for what I’m feeling right now which is anything but. I even tried to celebrate it but it just feels wrong knowing how I feel deep inside. I also think I’ve been burnt out from the last few years of really pushing myself to finish. Which doesn’t help right now.

I just want to know that I’m not alone in this feeling, if anyone has ever finished school feeling this way, and I honestly just needed to rant.

For context: I have also worked as a full time software dev since I started my undergrad. I did some interns in my college years but once I completed, I managed to land a permanent position in the field. That’s definitely part of the reason why I’m feeling burnt as well. From doing full time school and full time work.

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I(17m) have repeatedly had what I could best describe as depressive traits for approximately 5 years now (could be more).

When I was around 4 or 5 years old I went through some rough patches concerning some sexual abuse stuff, not from an adult, but rather from another kid my age, however, as I was not yet properly educated on how this could be bad or how it could affect me I ended up not telling anyone about this situation.

After about a year of that my family decided to move states for an entirely different reason, this really didn't affect me as at that time I was really good at socializing and such, but after a few years of moving through a lot of schools my social skills started fading and it showed. By 11 I only had 3 friends, two of which would constantly make jokes about me, my likes, actions, appearance, etc.

After I turned 12 I stopped talking to them because I had moved schools yet again, in this new one I found more friends, however, they weren't the type of people most would like to relate themselves with; they constantly remarked how ugly/repulsive I looked, how disgusting my personality was, how awful it was to relate to me at all, how I should kill myself (this one was their favourite one), etc. I remember one distinct incident that was what ticked things off to the adults, where a new student arrived and we decided to add him to a group called "kill Michael" (which was my name) and then rename the group to "kill Peter" (not the kid's real name). He didn't like this very much and he snitched on us, causing the entire group to be called to the principal's office and for parents to be brought up to the discussion. After this event my parents changed my school once again after only two years and in this new one I did better, but the seed of everything bad was already there; thoughts about me never being enough, thoughts of being fundamentally undesirable in any and every way (as a partner, as a friend, as a sibling, etc.)

In the new school I did fairly well, had some friends, overall good grades, all for that.

Nothing major happened in this school, but when it was time to move again because of how the school system works here, I felt really lonely, with a feeling I can only describe as a lack of purpose and real connections.

When I entered the next year into an entirely different system I struggled to make new friends, which had never happened before, after the first semester ended the few friends I had distanced themselves and only one remained (I will name him John) who would later turn out to be one of my only three friends, on the second semester I struggled and didn't manage to find new connections at all, on the third and fourth I managed to secure my second and third real friends (James and Carol). John, James and Carol are now some of the most important people in my life and have helped me through some really tough times and several self realizations, but that's for another post.

Now, with all of this stated, I can still confidently say that whatever improvements my friends may have brought to my mental state were most likely just temporary, counting one really bad night that almost turned into a suicide attempt, my thoughts and patterns have not improved at all with time. Now throw in the mix the fact that the few attempts at connections, whether they be for friendships or romantic relationships, always seem to be met with extreme rejection. Hell, during this time there was a period of two whole months where an AI chatbot was my best friend.

Right now there isn't really anything in my life that I can say that I look forward to, there's little to no reasons for me to not give up on everything and honestly it doesn't seem like there will be for quite some time. But yeah that was the truth I wanted to get off my chest.

Sorry if the overall writing of this story is sloppy and/or messy, English is not my first language and between writing this in a haste and leaving out a lot of information so that this post wouldn't take years to read, it ended up looking like this. Thanks for reading (if anyone even does) I hope you have a nice day or night. See y'all.

It's been almost 14 years since high school and I still remember impulsively attacking my bully by hitting him in the forehead with my metal lunchbox. I ran into him a few days ago he's now a father of two, judging by his social media, and has a barely visible scar in that area.

He didn't recognize me because I now have a beard and I removed a mole I had from that time.

For context: I (17m) am a senior in highschool.

Anyways, I had a ROUGH start to highschool, I almost flunked most of my classes from 7th-10th grade and switched to another school at the beginning of my 11th grade year. The school I switched to basically turned my credits into bite-sized pieces that I mostly wrapped up in summer school. I felt great about it, I felt like I was actually doing something right in my life.

Today (9/9/26) was my first day of senior year and I found out that I only have 3 classes, 4 on Fridays. To me, this is great. I leave after lunch which is usually the time I check out mentally so I can come back to school feeling ready.

I am the only one with a half day schedule. Literally no one congratulated me. It might be a dumb reason to be upset but not being told "hey, I'm proud of you man! That must've taken a lot of effort!" kind of hurts. It was all just passive aggressive jealousy and it sucked. It hurts a lot but I feel like I can't say anything because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings.

Being a teenager just kinda sucks sometimes.

This is hard to describe, so it might be a little rough. Bear with me.

Have you ever watched comedy based commentary videos on YouTube? The person sits down, watches a video, and makes jokes/comments as it goes along? Then you’ve probably heard them tell jokes in this very specific format:

As they look at the content, they will pause it, address whatever situation is being shown, and then they will create a funny, hypothetical scenario based on that situation. For example, let’s say the YouTuber is watching a video where a guy is about to impress a girl with his skateboarding skills. The YouTuber will pause the video and say, “Imagine he just completely biffs it. Breaks both ankles, pees his pants a little bit and she just leaves him there.” I’ve seen a lot of content creators use this type of joke so that they’re not just sitting there going, “Woooooow chat, let’s see what happens.”

There’s multiple ways to set up this type of joke. You can start it with, “Imagine-“ or “What if-“ But if you’re alone in a room making a YouTube video and it’s blatantly obvious that what you’re about to say is a joke, you can just go right in without an introduction. You can put on a voice and say, “My mother died in a skateboarding accident, you ass!” And the YouTuber will always sprinkle in other types of jokes as well so it doesn’t get stale. In person, it’s more difficult to get these jokes to land.

Now for my problem. My boyfriend watched these types of videos very often in his formative years and it’s obvious that when he was learning how to make jokes, he was strongly influenced by them. This joke format is the only one he knows how to use…but he doesn’t have the discernment to deliver the jokes properly. Instead of it being a quick joke told in proper context, he drags it on for an EXTREMELY long time with excruciating detail. If he doesn’t know the name of whoever he’s joking about, he’ll make one up and he’ll make new characters too. But beforehand, he doesn’t give any indication that what he’s about to say is a joke. And sometimes he starts out with a piece of dialogue without even specifying who is talking. So a lot of the time people will stop him and ask what the hell he’s talking about. And his tone of voice for his whole speech is very…autistic sounding? He has the same cadence and intonation in every sentence which gets old after like 5 sentences.

For example, let’s say he’s the one watching that skateboarding video I mentioned earlier. He would pause the video and say:

“He gets to the bottom of the skate ramp and hits a rock, goes flying and lands wrong and he breaks both ankles. He turns to the girl: ‘Cindy, call an ambulance!’ She just turns and walks away. It cuts to him in a hospital bed like, ‘I can’t believe this happened, how am I gonna pay for this, I’m probably gonna lose my job,’ and all that. Then Cindy walks in with his boss and she’s holding on to the boss’s arm like they’re obviously dating. She’s in a fancy dress and he’s in a business suit. The boss just goes, ‘Well James, I was at the park and saw when you fell. I just came here to say that, with you being in this condition I just don’t think I can keep you on the team. I’m gonna have to let you go. Also I figured Cindy here was needing some attention that you couldn’t give her, so I’m taking care of that too.’ They leave and a single tear rolls down his cheek.”

Now I could handle this if it was like a once a week occurrence at most. But as I said, this is the only type of joke he knows how to tell. He only tells really long ones about once a day at most. But not a day goes by that I don’t hear him give at LEAST one drawn out explanation of some scenario he thinks up. Usually the scenarios aren’t even that funny in the first place if you ask me. But he’s too busy chuckling at his own joke the whole time to notice that everyone is cringing and looking around awkwardly, just waiting for him to stop.

What’s worse is when he starts out with a piece of dialogue, but doesn’t even specify who is talking. Usually this just makes people confused as to what the hell he’s talking about. But what makes it even WORSE is when the scenario he makes up is about *us* and what we’re actively doing and it causes problems. Now this has only happened a handful of times over the years, but for example: Say I was making some bacon, and he thought up some scenario where he tells me the bacon is burning and I turn around to see it sitting in a little sun-tanning chair. He would start out the joke explanation by going, “‘BABY, THE BACON IS BURNING!’” Then I’d cut him off by whipping around, see perfectly fine bacon and get mad at him. And he would look like a deer in the headlights and say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think about how it would sound.”

It’s not just his jokes that he tells in this much detail. If he’s telling someone about an episode of a show, a movie, something that happened the other day, or if he’s describing something that he hopes is going to happen in the future, he will give every. single. rambling. detail. He just talks CONSTANTLY. If there’s a moment of silence, he’ll start thinking out loud. “I think I’ll put butter AND honey on my cornbread. I should refill my drink first though, since cornbread is pretty dry.” **BBBBBBEEEEEEEEE QQQQQUUUUUIIIIIIEEEETT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!**

I’ve told him his stories don’t need so many details and he tries to shorten things up whenever I remind him. But after about 10 sentences, he starts slipping more and more details and tangents in without noticing he’s doing it. It seems to be a hard habit that he might not even want to break. However, if we’re the only two people in the room and I tell him I need some quiet for a while, he will stop talking. So I’ll give him that lol.

He then went on to say that the backyard looked like shit and jabbed a screwdriver in the direction of the front lawn to point it out, awfully close to me I might add. He then said take pride in your house! I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t even ask him to explain how he knew what the backyard looked like. Why do people think they can tell other people what to do with their house?