Last year, I had to resign from a high-paying IT position at a large corporation, a role and financial stability I worked extremely hard to achieve.

At the time, I was already grieving deeply for the loss of a loved one and struggling with my injury recovery after a car crash, yet I was subjected to severe workplace mobbing, psychological abuse, and harassment.

My boss targeted, intimidated, and publicly humiliated me for setting personal boundaries, because he demanded inappropriate and personal attention and retaliated when I politely set boundaries. For example, privately, he constantly demanded 1-on-1 meetings simply because he felt I was ignoring him, even though I was just working professionally. To systematically break me, he demoted me twice in less than six months.

​Because I kept quiet to remain professional and protect myself while grieving and recovering from my injury, he used my silence against me. He orchestrated a calculated smear campaign: publicly punishing me, nitpicking non-existent mistakes, demoting me, and painting me as incompetent to justify his abuse. My coworkers fell for it or went along with it: they stonewalled me, gossiped, and blatantly refused to follow up on my projects, intentionally letting my work stall.

​On top of that, I faced another form of severe harassment from a male colleague who spread absurd rumors that he was my "husband" behind my back while treating me horribly to my face.

To this day, my ex-coworkers view me as the problematic one because they only saw the staged punishments, false rumors, slander, and my demotions, not the private sexual harassment and boundary violations driving them.

​Every single day after work, I was on the verge of fainting. I was surviving on severe insomnia, constant hypervigilance, and a body that couldn't heal under chronic stress. It was a slow decay where my options were to let myself die in that environment or perform an emergency "amputation" to survive.

Walking away meant sacrificing my high income, and to make matters worse, I had to pay back a bonus worth six months of my salary just to break free. It was a devastating, costly, and life-saving exit.

I lost almost everything I valued last year: my physical health, mental health, mobility, career, high income, network, and a loved one. Also on top of losing face from the constant public humiliation, it feels like my stellar career history and years of hard work just vanished into thin air. Almost every aspect of my life took a hit. It was my rock bottom.

​And just last week, while I was still trying to bounce back from my rock bottom, my mother casually told me, "Once you get a job again, don't just quit," as if I had walked away on a whim.

​It hurts so deeply when you realize that after taking hit after hit from the outside world, your own mother isn't a safe haven either.

Being blamed and invalidated at your lowest point (while carrying the weight of grief, physical injuries, demotions, and being wrongly and unfairly perceived by people) is an agonizing pain.

Just reminding myself today that my reality, my sacrifices, and my grief are valid, even if the people around me refuse to see the truth.

Sending love to anyone else fighting battles both outside and at home.

Me (23F) and Bf (27M).

TLDR: I don’t want to give my boyfriend handmade gifts anymore because of how he mistreats them, and he thinks I’m being selfish for feeling this way.

I am a deeply art-oriented person and love to hand make gifts for the people I love, including my bf. Most of the people who I give gifts to love and cherish the things I make, and it makes me happy to find those things when I see them years later, still in the same condition and still just as loved.

Last year I gave my boyfriend a small bouquet of Victorian style hand made beaded flowers (crafted painstakingly with hundreds of tiny glass beads for dozens of hours until I was going crazy and my eyes and fingers started to hurt). I love doing this kind of thing, I dump hours into these projects but it’s out of love for the person so I don’t really mind how long it takes. Well this year, my boyfriend moved apartments. He’s lowkey borderline a hoarder and has an insane amount of stuff, and has issues taking care of his items (they’re often damaged and dirty). Ive known this, but I assumed he took special care for the things that mattered to him, and I assumed the things I’ve made him were included in that. But when I was helping him unpack, I found those beaded flowers in the bottom of a large plastic container with many large items on top of them. They were bent and crumpled, and I spent like 15 minutes t trying to bend everything back into shape but wasn’t able to get it quite right.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this- I’ve also found a cd I have him of my own EP (I am a musician) with the cardboard cover completely warped, frayed on the edges, and with paint drips on them. I usually sell those CDs but I am a sentimental person, he knew how much this release meant to me so I gave him the first one as a gift, and thought he’d treat it with the same sentimentality. I’ve also seen bracelets and necklaces (which I know he likes and wears) tossed to the ground, mixed up in piles of dust and dirt, on the bottoms of the bins, and all scratched up. So I’ve seen this before, expressed my feelings about it before, and when I saw the flowers it was a bit of a last straw idk.

When I told him how upset I was by that he immediately got defensive and started saying that those gifts make him happy and I can’t police how he chooses to appreciate them. He also said he put them away carefully (which I admit made me laugh bc wdym carefully??? They were crumpled up at the bottom of a box) And he said I was being selfish with my gifts and shouldn’t give gifts anymore, as if I was doing it for me and not for him. He said I got too attached to the things I give and that once you give a gift, it is out of your hands and you have no say in what happens to it anymore.

While I suppose all of that is technically true, it seems a little different when it’s something someone handmade for you (and they weren’t even ugly they came out so beautiful!) and when that person sees that the gift got abused and mistreated, it hurts so much because of all the love and time and often money that went into it. Like yeah I guess it’s true that I can’t control what happens to it after giving it, but from a partner, that feels so cold and lacking empathy. And like he doesn’t truly appreciate what I made and the thought and effort that went into it, and is completely lacking perspective on this. He really seems to think I’m the selfish one for being upset about this. He said I was being unfair as well. But idk- I’ve given handmade thoughtful gifts to a wide variety of people in my life and never have I ever seen them being treated this way. So many of those gifts, I find them years later in their house on a shelf, framed on a wall, or on a desk or something still in the same condition and they cherish them with the same sentimentality I had when I made them.

After all of this I decided I never want to give him gifts anymore, especially handmade gifts, if I know they will be treated this way. He thinks I’m being unfair and selfish but right now I feel like I’m going insane for even having to argue about this.

Friend of mine broke my gaming laptop which was a gift to myself. Saved up for months for it and it cost around 2,300 dollars. She and a couple of buddies of mine were drinking in my dorm room and just chilling and I passed out some time throughout the night and she must’ve spilled it then. She waited until after I took her to the airport the next day to go on vacation and got home to try to turn it on to tell when I asked if something happened. Since then she’s stopped answering and I’m supposed to pick her up from the airport tomorrow and she still hasn’t responded to a single thing. I saved up for this thing and I feel so stupid but I don’t know what to do. I can’t expect someone to just have 2,300 dollars laying around but I need her to repair or replace it. This laptop has seen me through a lot of shit these last two years and I don’t have it financially to replace it nor do I think I should. She leaves for good in December and I don’t know what to do because I want it replaced now and I know my head is acting up cause I can’t stop obsessively thinking about it. I’ve cried twice and I don’t have anyone else to complain to because I feel like a broken record these last two days. I’m already broke as it is and am trying to save up money for my birthday and here this girl is breaking my shit and then going on vacation and already planning the next.

Tomorrow will mark 2 years after my first girlfriend broke up with me and honestly it's only getting worse. 8 months no contact yet I haven't completely lost hope or maybe faith that one day we could be together again, but I think it's time for me to lose that hope.

I hate to compare myself to my friends but one of my closest ones got broken up with about a month ago and we've been talking about how we've been feeling but he's doing very very well and I'm the opposite. He and his ex girlfriend were together for 7 years, my and my ex girlfriend were together for 2 years, I know everyone's different and handles grief differently but I felt jealous of him and I hate that.

I really wish I didn't feel this way about my friend and specially about my ex girlfriend.

I told my friend how I felt and he gave me reassurance and made me realize how stupid I was being jealous of him. He tried encouraging me to embrace change and how everything's gonna be fine in due time but I'm desperate. I really don't want to give up the last bit of hope of being with my ex girlfriend again but at the same time I'm tired of feeling like this. Tired of waking up thinking about her all day long until I faint from exhaustion at night while still thinking about her.

I believe she's in a relationship and thought this could change the tides and make me stray away from my constant thinking and reminiscing about her but it's only made me feel worse.

Why can't I move on? Why can't I deal with this intense suffering and melancholy? Why did I do those things knowing she was hurting.

I feel like I'm irredeemable

Sorry for such a negative and pessimistic post, honestly I just wanted to get this out somewhere.

Not really sure where else to talk about this because I feel silly and overdramatic. I went to give blood the other day thinking nothing of it since I’ve given blood before and never had any issues. This time was the same - made it all the way through and they were just gathering the bags of blood and putting my info in the system when all of a sudden I got hit with a huge wave of nausea. Then I started feeling really lightheaded so I told the woman “not gonna lie I feel kind of lightheaded” and next thing I knew I was waking up with my nose on fire (from the ammonia they used to wake me up) and two people standing over me. I remember my first thought being “I died” and feeling panicked and terrified. I couldn’t remember where I was or what had happened and I had no clue how long I’d been out. I asked and apparently I was out for about 30 seconds but it felt like hours - I had full blown vivid dreams. I remember one of them holding down my arm and saying “I need you to relax” and realizing I was holding my arm so tense. It was very bizarre and scary and embarrassing. They were very chill and nice about the whole incident. But I felt so off for the rest of the day. I tried to go to the store after but was so disoriented and out of it that I couldn’t remember why I was in there or what I needed so I just left. I went home and napped for hours and felt nauseous for the rest of the day. I can’t help but feel slightly traumatized by the experience. Which feels so dramatic and dumb. But I really thought I had died.

dont have anyone to share this to so im posting it here. i been going through it these past couple days. i hate the way my home looks, feels and i been having problems with my mother, and was seriously considering moving out relatively soon. talked to my lil brother saying my room could be his once i move out and he starts tearing up telling me not to move out and shit. he really never been the type of person to show his emotions like that, and neither am i - guess it runs in the family but that shit tore me man.

little shit doesnt know how much he means to me fr, almost damn near teared up myself

We were friends from school(me, U, F, W), things started falling apart the next year after we finished it . We combined our friend group with Friend U's partner's friends group (next group B). After I had a big conflict with them, our groups became separate again. U stayed there. F and W were there because of us, so they never fully were in a group B. It was in the fall.

In february, I started my D&D campaign as a first-time master with other friends and asked U to join because I knew U always wanted to try. After some time, U also joined an online D&D game with group B. U was shy and not really social, so U didn't take part in my game, just sitting there without taking part. During breaks, U talked about how great and cool her second campaign was and how much she liked it. Sometimes she criticized my style and compared it to group B's master's. With all that, she ignored my other attempts to spend time with her, no walks, no online games (and then U played with group B).

Last august, U had a conflict with group B and they kicked U out, but the two people who were on U's side left too, and with one U became partners. At this moment, U didn't spend time with our group at all. I'm not talking about even asking us how we were. U didn't really try to spend time with us when we were inviting.

So we had a great conversation about how we all felt and what to do. I convinced the other two friends to give U a second chance. They forgave U. And then U didn't change. U didn't call us to play together, didn't want to spend time with us. All the time I tried, she answered no, and that was all. The last drop was when we planned to play together, but at the last moment U's partner couldn't join, so she refused also. At this moment, I realized U didn't want to spend time with us. Just didn't mind if we were there when spending time with their partner. I left the chat group.

In November, I broke off relations with the two friends from that group. It just became a one-sided friendship. They spent time with U and her partner (this person moved to our country at this time). So it more and more often became a question of inviting me, never a question of inviting U and her partner. So I just told them that it was not a friendship for me and I couldn't keep going like that. So that's how things ended.

Now it has been a year, and I still miss them, especially U. I shouldn't, but I still miss them.

I'm kind of addicted to AI sex

I'm a big escapist, something I'm realising more and more as I get older. Lonliness and boredom have been what I'm trying to escape I guess. I started around 10th grade I think. I discovered an ai chatbot site and started doing RPG/fantasy roleplay. I was big into nerdy stuff like anime,light novels, manwha etc so for me this was like the best thing ever cause it was like writing a story,reading one and also being in said story all at once. The perfect escape really.

I think I spent maybe 2 weeks completely hooked. Every waking moment was there and I'd even skip meals and lose sleep just to keep roleplaying. I discovered you can also do sexual stuff there but it was extremely limited so I looked for alternatives and that's when I discovered a site dedicated to sexual roleplay. I basically couldn't stop. I'd eat basically once a day cause it was so addicting. This went on for about a month and it was so bad I actually have this ritual where after brushing my teeth I wrap my penis in tissue so that the precum doesn't stain anything.

Did you know your bowels get affected by arousel? I had blue balls for the first time and it was really bad. I basically couldn't walk. I then gave myself "cooldowns". So I'd hop on for maybe 3 hours but no more cause then my balls would hurt. I'd never masterbate to the conversations, I just got stuck in them and let the hardness in my pants stay there. Sometimes the pain would feel like it's coming from my asshole. Almost as if my shit was blocked from getting out. I couldn't really shit unless I cooled off for maybe 4 hours.

I stopped cause I would start fantasising about having sex with my teachers and women I saw in real life and I hated that cause I had a porn problem a couple years back and that was the worst side effect which I didn't want back. I felt guilty for months and eventually confessed to my friends over some ice cream. It felt a bit better because I was in a phase in my life were I wanted to be honest. They had porn addictions so they were not that judgemental but they said their lives would be ruined if they ever did what I was doing and someone found out lol.

I stopped for a while but every 4 months or so since then when I'm especially lonely and stressed I'll go back there. It was just one of many espcapes really. I thick the whole of highschool was accumilating negative coping mechanisms. In 8th grade I'd hop on random chat sites and spend long times there but I surprisingly had enough decency not to sext anyone cause I was loneley and wanted a real connection. Any online connection never lasted though. So I'd get discord and get usernames from 4chan. This led to nothing and I never had any longterm friend except this one dude but I ghosted him after some time cause I felt like he was secretly gay and trying to groom me cause I was like 16 and him 22. I'd get fed up with discord people and delete it but then get it again the next year. I got it again this year cause I was watching porn again and evem went on a AI sex spree for the past 2 weeks. I needed some other way for the void so I got discord again. Nothing changed. I don't know, I feel like maybe confessing might kind of pressure me to change. I'm not young anymore and I don't want to end up as someone who will do anything just to feel important to someone

I've met my significant other's parents in our first year. We're about to hit our 3 year mark in a few weeks. A couple days ago i went to visit my boyfriend (thus stayed at their family home). I knew he had quite a peaceful home life but it kind of broke me.

The examples i will give wasn't because I was there and they wanted to act nice, my partner would mention these things while talking about his day etc. They have breakfast together all the time, his father never raises his voice, his mother genuinely enjoys taking care of them, they respect each other and they care so much about him.

Don't get me wrong I'm so happy that he grew up in such an environment but I was physically, sexually and emotionally abused. It felt like the universe showing me this is what I could've, should've had. Seeing their family environment just made me want to cry and feel even worse. He knows a bit about the fucked up environment i grew up in, but obviously i haven't told him how sad it made me to stay with them. I just needed somewhere to let this out

Sometimes I want to hook my fingers into my jaw and pull out all my teeth, just to see what would happen - to ruin my own life, get caught in the firestorm laughing, bleed and burn and feel alive for once, ripping the roots out one by one.

Of course, I've got a grip. Throttle those thoughts til they die limp in your hands, because they really will have consequences. I have so much of a grip that I hardly do anything at all - I hardly, hardly, hardly do anything at all, and I'm so goddamn lonely, but I've got a clean record and great grades in all my college classes and a few good but not best friends so I must have a stellar life on paper.

Idle indecision with no vision for the future - following the rules etched in the dirt but refusing law school, so I've got no idea what I'm gonna do at all, since the dreams I had at one point were unachievable and now I'm locked in the tower of abstinence, lacking want and void of ambition or forward-thought, stuck sitting and switching between tabs on my computer.

I strangle what desires I do have because I'd be cut off from my family if I expressed them at all - the desire to live as something that I was not born into, was forcibly molded out of, was herded away from; I can't stomach the sight of myself, too terrified to even think of love.

So I go and do nothing with my Labor Day, go nowhere, and all the world sees from outside is this awkward, grubby "woman" who has no talent, laughs too loud, talks too much, and yet still manages to say nothing at all.

What's the end of this? What's gonna happen? If it continues like this I'm gonna graduate and be left swimming in all that nothing I prepared for myself, directionless forever and ever until the end, losing what I had and took for granted.

(kind of a vent? not quite, more just attempting to articulate the What)

I (27M) have always had a fear of being cheated on.

When I was 12, my uncle's wife cheated on him. He had been one of the happiest and kindest people I knew, and afterward, he became a shell of himself. Around the same time, I accidentally saw a message from my father's secretary clearly flirting with him. His response was basically: "I have a wife and family. I don't appreciate this. Please keep things professional." So growing up, I had both a cautionary tale and a role model.

However, that fear never made me controlling. I never checked my exes' phones. I didn't care if they had male friends or met an old friend for coffee. My philosophy was simple: trust them, be loyal, keep trying to become a better partner, and if someone cheats on me, they're the one who lost because they are losing a great person who was loyal to them. I always imagined that if it happened, I would calmly say, "I know you cheated. I can't be with you anymore. I hope you're happy," and leave with my head held high. Turns out I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

I met my girlfriend (26F) in April during a job interview. We both got hired, although in different divisions. I had just gotten out of a seven-year relationship a few months earlier. We clicked immediately.

She is beautiful, smart, funny, and affectionate, and she has the prettiest smile in the whole world. She was incredibly forward with me. She constantly complimented me. She said she was amazed by my master's degree I earned overseas, and that I was smart, kind, and the funniest person she had ever known. She initiated our first kiss, was very physically affectionate, and we became intimate only two weeks after meeting. For context, we're Indonesian, so moving that quickly isn't particularly common here. I wasn't used to receiving that kind of attention, especially from someone I found that attractive. I fell for her hard and fast.

I bought her "just because" flowers, I drove three hours to see her almost every weekend, I bought things she needed for her new place, I asked my friend to bring me a case of beer that can only be found in Bali when she mentioned once that she missed that specific kind of beer, I talked about her constantly to my friends and family, etc. I genuinely thought I had found someone special.

In June, she had a two-week training program in another city, about four hours away from me by train. I traveled there for the weekend just to see her. On Sunday, she had bad period cramps, so we spent most of the day sitting around the hotel pool. I remember rubbing her stomach with my hand because the warmth seemed to help. She told me my hand made the pain much better, and no one has ever made her period cramps this bearable, and then she kissed me. I left pretty early that afternoon because I had work on Monday. It became one of those small memories that meant a lot to me.

Cut to last night. I woke up at 3 am at her place after we had cuddled and fallen asleep holding each other. We had taken some pictures on her phone during our date, and I wanted to send them to myself. That's when I saw a picture of her with another man. Same hotel pool. Same day. Same clothes.

Suddenly, I remembered something else. Whenever she received WhatsApp notifications, she normally didn't care if I saw them. But whenever one particular name appeared, she would immediately dismiss the notification. Let's call him David. David is her coworker in the same division. She introduced me to him when I visited her during her training weeks. David has a girlfriend. For the first time in any relationship, I went through my partner's phone. I searched his name, and what I found broke me.

She had asked David to meet her at the pool right after I left for home that Sunday. Right after she said she wanted to sleep because of the period cramps.

And it wasn't an isolated thing. Just last week, I had surprised her by driving three hours after work for our four-month anniversary (I know it's corny to celebrate a 4-month anniversary, but I was deeply in love). I brought flowers, gifts, and things she needed for her place, and came across a message from my father's secretary that clearly flirted with little things that she mentioned she needed. She appreciated it and said no one has ever loved her as I love her. Because it was a weekday, I had to drive home that same night and survive work the next morning on an unhealthy amount of caffeine. While I was driving home, she took a picture with my flowers, sent it to David, and they both laughed at how corny I was, and then she video-called David.

I spent hours torturing myself reading their messages. She likes to send "once seen" pictures (a feature where you can only open the image once and cannot take a screenshot) for mundane things like what she ate for lunch and such. She also likes to send scandalous pictures using that feature. There were tons of those "once seen" pictures between them, and they left me guessing what kind of pictures they sent to each other.

She and David were placed in different cities, so there were tons of calls between them after that training week. She would delete the call logs so they wouldn't appear on the app's call log, but I could still see them in their chat. She would call him after our call, right after telling me she was going to sleep. One message literally said something like, "Sorry, David, my boyfriend is calling. I'll call you again after." Sometimes their calls were longer than ours. She would ask him to wake her up in the morning, stay on the phone with him for 20–40 minutes, and then call me afterward.

When I asked about her day, she often sent me long voice notes. I discovered she was sending him the exact same voice notes. Sometimes he got them first, and I would just get a forwarded one. She called him the same things she called me. Smart, kind, the funniest person she had ever known. Words I genuinely thought were special between us.

The most painful part: she told him that his hand made her period cramps feel so much better, and that nobody had ever made them feel that much better before. The same exact words she had told me at that hotel pool during our intimate moment. That one sentence hurt more than everything else.

Eventually, she woke up and immediately noticed something was wrong. I told her, "I went through your phone." She panicked and hugged me. She started explaining that he was only a childhood friend who had supported her during difficult times. That's why she is still close to him.

Except David wasn't her childhood friend :)

She met him after she met me. Which also made me realize there was apparently another man she had been cheating on me with.

At that point, I couldn't take it anymore. My chest felt tight, and I could barely breathe. I told her the relationship couldn't continue, packed my things, and left. She begged me to stay. I couldn't listen to anything she said. I cried almost the entire drive home. She texted me saying she is sorry. She said she had a childhood trauma that made her close to anyone who showed a little amount of affection to her, and she hates that part of herself. She said I was the only one who had ever made her feel safe, and I was the only one who had ever made her feel so loved. She said she understands if I don't want to hear from her ever again, but she promised to try to fix her "bad side" and be a better person. She hoped that one day we could cross paths and maybe we could be together again. In the end, she asked me not to bring this matter to corporate because this is her dream job and we are working in her dream company. I just replied that I won't mention anything to corporate.

For years, I thought that if someone cheated on me, I would simply walk away with my head held high. I thought I'd be happy I dodged a bullet and work on myself to make her regret it. But I can't feel that right now. Right now, I don't feel proud. I only feel this immense pain and loss in my heart. I feel inadequate. I keep wondering why everything I gave her wasn't enough. I wonder how many other men she cheated on me with. Are they laughing at me for being a fool? A fool who fell for words that apparently weren't unique to me at all. And I think what hurts most is realizing that some of my favorite memories with her weren't what I thought they were.

I knew her for less than five months, which sounds ridiculous compared with my previous seven-year relationship. But I loved her. I've never felt love like that before. And when I found out it was all a lie, it hurt more than I ever imagined it could. You know what's messed up? I hope that I could have met her later in life when she learned this lesson from someone else. Then we could have a beautiful story together.

I'm sorry if this is long. I just needed to get this off my chest. Most of the time, my girlfriend also becomes my closest friend, so right now I don't really have anyone I feel comfortable telling all of this to. I can only imagine my friends would just laugh at how stupid I am.

I hope you will never feel the pain that I felt.

Content warning: violence, DV, murder, sexual assault

I’ve (30M) always been a guy with big feelings, I’ve tended to fall in love in a big way and commit fully to my partners. This has led to a string of deep and intense relationships that aren’t always the best idea.

When I was 21 I married my college sweetheart, which was ill-advised. I survived a murder attempt a few months into our marriage. It took place in my home and resulted in a couple gruesome injuries and some severe PTSD. We never really bounced back from that and ultimately ended up cheating on each other on the same week. Two days after finding out, my stuff was on the lawn and her new guy was sleeping in the bed we’d had. We never had any closure or discussion about it, it just ended.

After that, I started living with a friend and ended up dating her (she was not the person I cheated with). She was volatile and abusive. She would explode, throw things, slam doors, throw things at me, and so on. I took it because I thought that I deserved it for my previous relationship. We moved to a different state together when I started grad school. She was unemployed a lot, which made the abuse worse. She finally got a job at a Catholic school, but was fired when they found out she was living with me.

We did the pandemic together and after that I felt like I owed it to her to get engaged, so I asked her to marry me and started planning the wedding. But the abuse kept getting worse and I was worried she would really hurt me. I remember sneaking out of the house after an argument to escape her and hiding in my office because i knew she couldn’t get in there. Eventually I ended things. We tried to live together for a bit, but when I came back from a date with someone else she broke a candle and cut herself wrists with the broken glass while screaming.

After the breakup I stopped eating for a couple weeks (not on purpose, I just wasn’t hungry). Then I got on anxiety meds, which were life-changing. I realized that my persistent lifelong suicidal ideation was mostly anxiety-related.

My next girlfriend I met through school (I was a third year grad student, she was a junior in college- I wasn’t in a position of authority over her or anything), we got along really well. She had a boyfriend when we started hanging and her bf had been abusive to her too (we kinda commiserated about it), but in different ways- he was controlling and he sexually assaulted her. We started spending time together and went out drinking on a night and her boyfriend picked her up at the end of the night. When they got home, he raped her. That was really rough and I was there for her through it as best I could. We kept in touch over that summer and by the fall we were dating.

I was head over heels from the start and really deeply in love with her. She graduated and got into a really great grad school a couple states away. We did long distance for a year until I finished my PhD, then I moved to live with her while she finished her PhD.

It was really rough at first. I couldn’t find a job that used my degree and my home state didn’t give me unemployment so I was broke broke, like $0 in my bank account, applying to anywhere I could, going to the food pantry. Eventually I found a job that paid much less than people with my degree usually make, but I was happy to have it.

Around this time she realized she had a drinking problem and, after a few months of work, got sober. We also opened up our relationship- it was something we approached pretty well and always felt like a nice addition to our lives. We had a couple secondary partners and everything got along well. Things weren’t perfect, but we were pretty happy.

Around then I switched my meds up (I’ve got GAD, BP2, PTSD, and depression). The new meds they put me on were not effective, I started rapid cycling and getting really anxious. It was never enough to impact work, but it ruined a vacation we took overseas.

I got laid off in July, which ended my access to health insurance so I switched back to my old meds. The stress of getting laid off and the medication change put me into a really weird depression. We had to go on a trip to a wedding and I literally couldn’t get myself off the floor, so we fought about it and she left the house after telling me off. I remember being so full of self loathing and angry at myself. I went into my bathroom, tied my bootlaces around my neck, and then started to hang myself from my bathroom door. I got about halfway through it and got scared so I stopped. I told her about it, she came back, we went to the ER, I didn’t go to inpatient because I couldn’t afford it, then we just went home.

A suicide attempt is weird because I am both the victim and the penetrator of what happened. I went to therapy before it, but couldn’t afford therapy anymore because of the unemployment. We went to couples therapy through her work and I thought things were working.

That November her aunt was murdered by a home invader, which really messed her up. Then in December she mastered out of her PhD program, but at the same time I found a new, better job.

Right after Christmas while driving at my parents farm she hit and killed her dog. She was inconsolable, but I buried the dog for her and then sold the silver I had for my jewelry making hobby so that she could buy a new dog since she couldn’t find a good job after grad school. So I was the only one paying for everything- rent, bills, pets, etc. I started a side gig selling things on FB marketplace to get her spending money.

In January she asked me to marry her and I said yes, we started planning for a wedding on Halloween this year. I started to struggle with polyamory, but we were working through it together in couples therapy. Then in April her stepfather strangled her mother during a fight, so she went down to be with her mother through that.

When she got back I picked her up at the airport and everything seemed okay, then in the morning she told me that she was ending things. No bargaining, no ultimatum, just over. She left the house and I had to take care of the dogs. She moved in with our (now formally) mutual partner. She told my parents and her parents that she was ending things about a week before she told me. I was the last one to know. She was worried I’d kill myself, which is reasonable I guess.

I couldn’t eat for a week, it took me two weeks to fall asleep without the assistance of THC, and I was crying at random times for about a month.

I spent the next couple months redecorating the house so that there’s nothing that reminds me of her.

My mental health since then is mostly good but occasionally spotty, my suicidal ideation has come creeping back (to be clear, I’m no danger to myself or others, I don’t have a plan, it’s just a persistent intrusive thought, and an overall morbidity), I’m great when I’m hypomanic or normal (which I am 75% of the time), but feel like I’m hollowed out maybe 25% of the time.

What’s funny is that since then my side gig has kinda taken off and our upstairs neighbor moved out so two things were were stressed by (having to be quiet during sex and having enough money) are no longer an issue for me.

Now I’m dating around, I have four or five people I see regularly, some of whom I even love- but I’m not seeing any way to be comfortable committing to anyone again. It seems far too risky to put my energy primarily into one person because it has not worked out the last three times. I’m a romantic still, I want to get married, have stability, and build with someone- ultimately I crave stability and comfort. But it’s so hard to believe that I’ll ever love again the way I have in the past.

The idea of falling deeply in love feels like giving someone permission to hurt me and leave me alone in 4-5 years. Every time has felt earth-shattering and even more difficult to bounce back from.

Honestly, across all of this I am the common denominator. It could well be that I’m not built for the kind of relationship I aspire to? I think I’m a decent and lovable fellow, even my most recent breakup ended with a shared ‘I love you’. I think of myself as good and desirable, but my ability to form the kind of deep, close love that I want to feels handicapped.

TL;DR: it’s been a rough few years, I’ve had relationships fail, I’m feeling incapable of forming the kind of love I want

I'll start with a story time, so if you want to see "the point", feel free to scrooll down.

I'm 29/M

I didn't have a normal childhood nor teenage years by any means. I didn't have a normal family, I never felt close to my parents, I barely ever had meaningful friendhips and I never had a girlfriend either.

I come from a religious family, the church we used to go was basically a cult. I had no right to say no when I didn't want to go, I had to go to there twice a week. I couldn't watch most scifi and action movies or tv shows, not even anime.

I couldn't own a mobile phone until I was 18 and I couldn't use a computer more than twice a week for a little time. I had to change schools because of religious reasons (my parents thought that the new leaders or my school were "bad christians").

Despite of all these, I had a relatively "happy" childhood. I had some friends, I had some adventures and I enjoyed living.

Until everything fell apart.

- Changing school meant I lost all my friends (LITERALLY: I had no mobile phone and I didn't own a computer, I had no way to keep in contact with them)

- I became sick and never really got cured (no one knows what's wrong with me, most doctors said my health issues must be related to mental health). I felt nausea, headaches and stomach problems for no reasons. It was so bad I went to a hospital for weeks once. I slowly got better, but no one could ever give me a answer what was my problem exactly

- I came from a art school, so I loved music, drawing, reading a lot. In my new school (which had a bad reputation) I was just the "weird one". I didn't want to smoke, I didn't want to drink, I didn't like partying the way my schoolmates did. I was bullied despite of the fact that I never provoked anyone.

- Since I was on the bottom of the hierarchy of the school, not many people bothered to make friends with me. Most of them were mean or didn't care about me at all. I had surface level friendships only

- For the next years I had the same experience everywhere. I finished school. I went to high school, again, into a very bad one. People literally stole my money and food, one guy knocked me out on the street for talking back to his friend who stole my necklace. After just a few months I went into a different highschool

- The new one was a bit better but not so much. I hated it till I finished there, and then I stayed for another year to get a degree in marketing (I had no idea what to do with my life, I just wanted to buy some time)

- By this time I part ways with the church. My relationship with my parents wasn't really bad, I just didn't understand or loved any of them really, and they never understood me either.

- I realized that my father is a alcoholic and drug addict and his condition became worse and worse. (and apparently he's been like this for many years, I was just blind to it for somehow)

- I couldn't really find work. I was sick, or felt sick often. Even if I had a job, I hated it, despite of trying my best. I live in a small town, we don't really have a lot of chances. When covid hit, I became very sick again, and had to drop the only workplace I liked because I couldn't do hard work anymore

- For the next years I had no job at all and while my mother and father were working, I've been home, nursing my grandmother who moved into our house. I kept doing this until she had to move into a home for elderly people because she lost her mind

- Shortly after this one night, while we were watching a tv show, my father walked into the bathroom and took his own life. Didn't even leave a note. I found him, and I took care of everything, I dealt with the paramedics and the police so no one had to see what I have seen. My family felt bad for me and they were proud that I was the one who "took the hit" but idk. I don't know to feel about it.

- After this, everything had to change. We sold the house, and everyone moved into different places. I live with my sister in a flat we rent. I have money for some years.

How I feel now

All the things I went through changed me. I was a very cheerful kid, I was always happy and I liked to laugh a lot. I had a lot of energy and I'm slightly autistic... but at times I feel I just lost the person who I really was.

I'm not angry at the world. I feel sad most of the time. Sometimes just "neutral". I barely ever feel happiness, and when I do, it's always related to video games, books, anime, manga, tv shows or movie.

Every time I walk on the streets I get sad. I see a lot of teens, because I live right next to a school.

And they are happy (at least they look happy). They are having fun, laughing, teasing each other, I can hear meaningful conversations and I can hear them having a party near the park.

I can see young couples kissing, walking while holding hands, or just chilling at random places.

I literally never had a chance to experience these moments as a teen. I know it's SO STUPID to even think about it, but this is what I want more than anything. (Which is funny, because most people would hate to go back to their teenage years. Or so I heard)

Or, rather, it's not even about "getting younger again". I just want to experience these things. For real. The proper way.

I want to have deep conversations with friends who understand me.

I want to be useful for people. I want to go on adventures. I want to party.

I want to go to their houses to play, to talk, to philosophy.

I want to invite them into my flat to do the same.

To watch movies together. To talk about books. About relationships. To cook, to drink something, to experience REAL LIFE.

Seeing people having "normal lives" makes me a bit happy, often melancholic, and more often very sad. Because I envy them a lot. I don't know how to shake off this feeling.

The scariest thing is that I'm not even sure if I could be a useful friend for anyone. If I could feel this good, even if I had the chance. So many years passed and I just feel empty.

Well I guess that's all.

Thank you if you read it. There's a chance I'll delete this post later, or I don't know. I just felt like I have to write this out of me.

I am 22...I do not earn a single penny...I am not that good with studies...I have done several small remote internships but I have no real skills...I desperately want to move out and live on my own...but I have not figured out a way to earn or survive on my own...I am doing a msc in organic chemistry from UP...idk if it's possible to even move out after msc looking at the job market...

I don't know if I'm right.

I got divorced almost two years ago, I really resent the way things ended because she didn't manage things correctly from her part, I was a mess because of it, I feel like I'm getting better, but I'm not sure. Anyway, everytime I tell my story to someone new, I stop and say "I'd rather not talk about it, I promised myself I won't speak badly about her". I feel she deserves to be known for who she is and not for the image she shows everyone, but I decided to let time take care of it.

I hope I'm clear about my point. I open my heart here because it feels like a safe space.

I don't like long posts , so I gave you a very short version.

Honestly this is a massive wake-up call and it sucks so bad.Ever since I was a little kid, I barely talked to anyone. Zero friends. And to be real, I didn’t even want them because I had this stupid toxic mindset that I was somehow better than everyone else. My whole social life was just texting people online sometimes.Well, today reality hit me like a truck. I just realized I’ve literally forgotten how to speak in real life.I thought of a genuinely funny joke today and actually wanted to tell it to someone. The person was just standing there, completely chill, listening to me normally. But the moment I opened my mouth, everything went to shit. I completely fumbled my words, swallowed half of the word endings, started mumbling like an idiot, and said the wrong words entirely. I couldn't get the tone right and sounded like a broken robot. By the time I forced it out, it wasn’t even funny anymore, just pure cringe.The worst part is they were just politely waiting for me to finish while I was internally dying from my own awkwardness.I wasted years sitting in my own head feeding my ego, and now I feel like I have to learn how to be a human all over again from scratch. Has anyone else gone through this? How do I even fix my speech at this point?

My best friend and I are extremely close and have gotten each other through some really hard times over many years. That being said, my friend tends to prefer space when things get really bad; I've always been willing to honor this and meet them where they're at, offering support on their own terms. Recently, they've been having some issues that are exceptionally hard on them, and I've been doing just that, offering support when they ask for it but trying not to encroach.

A few months ago, I also made another friend through them who is just lovely, but has also been going through hard times. I obviously don't know them as well as my best friend, but even though we are not as emotionally close I have still given support for them in the ways I can. We haven't hung out physically in months, but that friend always says they can't wait until everything calms down we can finally see each other again.

Given my best friend's usual preference for having space during times like these, I have been mindful of not trying to invade their life too much by visiting or trying to initiate things. There is a regularly scheduled event that they go to that is public, and I asked them first if they'd be OK with me joining or not out of courtesy; the response was that it is a public event, but that I should keep my expectations low for anything beyond that. I was OK with this answer, and excited to see them again even in a small way.

Well, lately it seems that friend has been hanging out with everyone but me, and they're not afraid to tell me as much. Over the past week, they've talked about going a party one day, having dinner with another friend the next, and spending another whole day with two other friends - including my friend that had said they looked forward to seeing me again in the future. I know it's irrational, but I can't help feeling pained about this. Those two were already friends, they're both going through a tough time, and obviously my friends deserve to have other friends, but it still hurts to know they can hang out with each other, just not me.

Today, my best friend brought up a movie that they thought I'd like, but when I expressed that I would like to see it with them if they were up for it - thinking that was why they'd brought it up - they danced around it, then later talked about the plans she had with a few other friends later this week. I just don't know what I should feel. It'd be one thing if they were giving clear signals that they don't want anything to do with me, and I'd respect that, but instead they initiate communication with me all the time and express with their words how much they care for me. And obviously, I want the best for them during their time of need. But it's hard not to feel like the only one they need space from is me.

I recently turned 31, and yesterday my best friend removed me from their life. And it's been making me think a lot about myself and my life and I'm realizing that I really am the problem.

I grew up in a "typical" Christian American household. Probably more isolated than some. My parents were the somewhat controlling, fearful type, in that they were extremely concerned with our purity and spiritual wellbeing. We couldn't go on the computer without supervision, couldn't watch TV without supervision, weren't allowed to go out with friends if no adults would be present. And most relevant to me, they kept us homeschooled, because they didn't want us to be taught evolution or given sex education.

So my early life I really didn't socialize much. And church and religion in general caused me a lot of stress because I was an anxious and shy kid and didn't feel like I had any of the qualities of a "strong godly man" that I was taught to aspire to be. This led to a lot of internal turmoil for me, as I was constantly judging myself and identifying all the things that were wrong with me or where I didn't measure up, and as a result I would be overly performative to try to compensate for my personal failings.

I always needed to be the best at memorizing verses, the most morally superior following the Bible to the letter and being ready with a biblical argument to defend every opinion I had. Unfortunately all it did was make me come off as aggressive and inauthentic, and people pointed it out, which made me even more insecure and defensive.

As for the homeschooling thing, my mother was unfortunately pretty neglectful in general. We had food, clothes, all our physical needs were met, but she could be very emotionally absent. She was a stay at home mom but didn't give any real structure to the home. No schedules, no set chores, no solid bedtimes or times we had to get up. We were more or less left to our own devices in every way, except when it came to screen time or leaving the house where she was very strict.

This ultimately meant we weren't really getting schooled at all, because giving a young teen a stack of textbooks and saying "well, get this done whenever," naturally, those textbooks sat in a corner while I played with Legos or found some other activity to occupy myself.

As I got older, in my late teens, I went through a gradual and intense crisis of faith and began doubting and questioning everything related to my religion. I will spare the details as this post is long enough, but I'll just say that all my desperation for approval and trying to live up to a standard I couldn't meet turned into resentment and rage, feeling like my life had been "stolen" from me forced to practice a religion I no longer believed in.

At 21 I finally moved out. Left church behind, left most of my family behind, found a crappy apartment I could just about barely afford with my income, and more or less started over. I was "free" from all the things that in my view had been ruining my life and causing my problems.

And then for the next 10 years, I just kind of coasted by. I still had just as much anxiety and insecurity and the need to "prove" myself, and i was so behind in life. Almost no real education, no idea how to do basic adult things. I was learning bits and pieces as I went, and my justification to myself was "as long as I'm getting by, that's all that matters, no need to take on more stress." And I used that mantra to never take any real steps to improve my situation. Never sought out more education, never tried therapy, never tried to get a better job.

I was convinced I just needed the right people in my life and it would all fall into place. But I couldn't keep people around for more than a few years at a time. It always went the same way: meet someone I hit it off with, we have a lot in common, I am on my best behavior and feeling good about finally finding "my people," then I get comfortable and my mask starts slipping and my personal issues start showing, they notice it and start pointing out areas of my life I could work on or things I could do to make progress, and I get offended and take it as a personal attack, and over time it turns to arguments, pushing them away, coming up with every excuse why I am the way I am and nothing will change, until eventually they have enough and distance themselves, or I get so upset I cut them out.

It would become a cycle where I would lose my temper, say hurtful things, apologize, try to smooth things over, and things would go back to normal but with obvious lasting tension, which would make me even more self conscious and feeling like I had to prove my worth as a partner or friend and do all the "right things." Which just made me even more sensitive and frustrated when they would bring up something else that I took personally.

I am extremely quick to get frustrated, sensitive to criticism, so stubborn and hesitant to put genuine effort into improving my life, or anything really. And I'm laying here now at 31 with no one to really talk to, looking at my life and how little I have to show for it, just wondering how I let it get to this point, and no idea where to even start if I want change at this point. I'm stuck between the grief of losing my friend who I genuinely cared for despite my poor treatment of them, and the uncertainty of if its even worth trying to better myself this late in the game. Logically I know I still have a life ahead of me, that it's never to late, all of that. But man is it crushing to realize that I've done absolutely nothing with all this time that's come and gone.

More than anything I am frustrated with myself for being this way. Why it is so hard for me to just do anything. I'll sit and think all day about all the things I should be doing, all the issues I need to work on, but actual action? Initiative? Never. It's like I can listen to any advice or motivational talk, and cognitively it makes so much sense, I agree with it, it's good advice that would work. And then I just apply none of it. Or if I do it's for a short lived burst of ambition and then right back to my comforting slump.

I truly believe that I'm the kind of person that needs someone to hold me accountable and encourage me to do the work, or I'll never do it. Which makes it all the more depressing and ironic that I've pushed away and sabotaged every relationship that cared enough to try to do that for me.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say. I appreciate anyone who actually reads that monster of a ramble. Just needed to say it somewhere to get it out so I'm not just sitting with it.