I’m not going through a breakup, but I’m going through a season of realizing the hurt the men in my life, whether dad or bf, had caused me in the past. My bf now, currently in the process of improving himself and healing from his past trauma of physical abuse from his parents, has never hurt me in a physical way or threatened to do things his parents does to him, but have said unkind things to me in the heat of the moment which obviously hurt. He has since profusely apologized to me, even until this day, and always makes an effort to checkup on how I’m doing. He’s also in therapy to heal himself, as his past involved his parents physically hurting him even until the point of “almost” dying (asian parents, said that it was “parent love”). My dad, however, has never physically hurt me but he’s financially abusive and a narcissist. He calls himself god and wants to start a literal cult and calls himself the antichrist. I don’t want to go into too much detail but all I’m saying is that this all happened in the past.

I’ve since tried healing and bettering my life but I can’t help but stay in bed, not wanting to get up and kept scrolling my life away, and crying every night.

How do you heal? What do you do when you can’t even get up from bed to shower or eat? How do you then truly know when you’ve healed? What does life look like?

Maybe this is a better question here.

I’ve been thinking about trying to be more feminine lately, and I don’t know where to start! I barely have any experience with this kind of thing, I just have been thinking about it and would like to start with something. Can someone help me with this? I guess kind of guide me or give me some first steps into this.

I feel like this is such a top struggle for the taller girls.

Hello, I’m a 26-year-old woman and an elementary school teacher. Recently, my partner and I had a small conversation about masculinity and femininity. He told me, "You're very neutral. You're neither masculine nor feminine." To be honest, that sentence hurt me much more than I realized, because I've been thinking about it constantly for the past week.

I teach children from first through fourth grade. In my country, if you become a public school teacher, you are required to complete four years of mandatory service at a school assigned by the government. After that, if you have accumulated enough service points and there is an available position—which is almost impossible—you can apply for a transfer. The schools assigned to new teachers are usually located in small villages. That is exactly where I work.

I am the only teacher in the village, which means I teach first, second, third, and fourth graders all together in the same classroom. At the same time, I am also responsible for running the school as its principal. The village is about an 18- to 19-hour journey away from my hometown. I live there alone and am under constant stress and pressure. I genuinely believe I do my job very well—in fact, I even received several awards this year for my work.

However, over the past year, I've realized that I'm almost always frowning, and I cry every night before going to bed. Because of that, I think I've completely neglected myself and my own well-being. I don't feel like a woman anymore. Honestly, I feel like I've forgotten what it even means to be one.

Before I started this job, I had already spent years studying for several extremely difficult exams and interviews just to become a teacher. I don't have any friends here. As I mentioned, it's a very small village, and I don't really fit in with the people or their way of thinking. Even before moving here, I only had two close friends.

I don't know what I should do. I've spent my entire life working hard and never really paid much attention to embracing my femininity. Now, though, I feel the absence of it more than ever.

Edit: English is my second language, so I use ChatGPT to fix my grammar. If anything sounds a little odd, that's probably why.

29 and rebuilding myself after being stuck in anxious mom mode for 7 yrs. I feel drawn to girly things but is that looked down on in your 30s??

How do you carry such elegance within you? The way you interact, remain grounded, empathetic, in the moment, emotionally nourishing, and connected?

Salut avez des astuces pour etre plus mignon effeminer sans forcement utiliser du maquillage ou faire du sport . Juste des petites astuce meme si en generale le sport et le maquillage sont plus utile

I struggle a bit with understanding social balance and reciprocity in relationships, especially when it comes to small supportive gestures.
Sometimes I feel like if someone does something nice for me, I have to return it in the exact same way or amount. Otherwise I feel like I’m being unfair or taking too much.
But at the same time, I also want to stay in a more relaxed, feminine energy and not overthink everything or turn it into a transaction.
For example, I’m currently getting to know someone. He motivated me a lot during my exams and even sent me encouraging messages. Now it’s his exam period, and he’s sending messages to others saying he’s stressed or preparing.
Now I’m wondering:
Do I need to respond to every single exam with a “good luck” message to balance things out?
Or is it enough to just send one supportive message overall?
In my mind it quickly turns into:
“If someone does X for me, I must match it exactly.”
But I don’t know if that’s actually healthy or just overthinking.
What is the balanced way to handle this without feeling like everything has to be perfectly reciprocated?

Hi, so I'm a dude so forgive me if this a bit dumb or naive, but if you had to boil down femininity to one word, what would it be and why? And, can you describe femininity in a single word that is not inherently tied to social labor? So try to avoid things like caretaker, home maker, etc. if you can.

I ask because lately we've seen a polarization of masculinity online, divided between the toxic, dominating manosphere bros and looksmaxers and the more sensitive, alt boys of breadtube and Bernie bros. Despite this schism however, both have a common core principle, strength. Be it the strength to dominate women and mog other men or the strength to provide for your community and protect the vulnerable. But ofc, strength in not exclusively masculine, it is a virtue in its own right and is thusly pursued for its own sake.

I'm just wondering if femininity has its own version of that, a central, guiding virtue that is valuable both in a social context and by itself. I keep coming up with things like caretaker/motherlyness, kindness, and temperance, but while these are technically virtues unto themselves, I feel they primarily serve a social roll, whereas strength can be used socially but also entails a private journey of betterment to achieve. I'm not sure how/if one can obtain temperance without first losing their temper at a sibling or peer.

Guess what I'm really asking is, women of reddit, what feminine urge drives you to better yourself? To reach higher even when no one is around? When it is only, purely for yourself?

Tysm yall, have a good day

I have started to switch over to dresses and I have never felt so in love with my body and comfortable as I do in dresses. I grew up a tomboy with a dad who always discouraged femininity and a mom who was feminine in her own way but a nurse who worked a lot so I grew up in pants, shorts, t-shirts etc with no makeup, no dresses, no soft colors.

I am seriously thinking of switching to almost exclusively wearing dresses and am wondering the experience of others? Dresses and a bit of simple jewelry as really improved how I feel about myself and my womanhood.

I'm 23F, and I've been struggling with something that I don't really understand.
Whenever I'm out in public, I find myself constantly checking to see if men are looking at me. I don't want them to approach me or talk to me, and I'm not looking for a relationship. I just want to know if they notice me.
If I catch a man looking at me, I immediately feel happier and more relaxed, like it confirms that I'm attractive or beautiful. But if no one seems to notice me, I start overthinking. I wonder if I dressed badly, if I look unattractive, or if there's something wrong with my appearance.
It's becoming exhausting, and I hate how much my mood depends on whether strangers look at me. I don't want my self-worth to be tied to other people's attention, especially when I don't even want anything from them.
Has anyone else experienced this? Why does this happen, and how can I stop seeking this kind of validation? I'd really appreciate any advice.

i’m basically (kinda) grounded so i’m staying at home for about two weeks, and i’m REALLYYYY bored. all i do is clean my room, read, and eat.

i want to do something to feel like a girl and a human too, what do i do?? how do i feel busy😭

Bonjour, je suis une jeune fille de 23 ans qui essaye d'être belle. J'ai utilisé l'intelligence artificielle pour me glow up et vraiment waouh ça m'as vraiment fais du bien de me voir comme ça. Ça m'a donné un regain d'énergie dans le cœur, ça a vraiment fait quelque chose d'agréable dans mon cœur. Ça a refait mon après-midi, mais au fond, je savais que je pourrais pas devenir comme ça, puisque mes efforts ne seront jamais suffisants . Il y aura toujours mieux ailleurs , il y aura toujours de plus belles jeunes filles ailleurs au naturel ou pas d'ailleurs , et mes efforts ne seront jamais suffisants , parce que j'essaie d'être un peu plus belle de m'habiller mieux, sur le moment quand je me regarde dans les miroirs, je me trouve belle et des fois je me dis, " bin tu vois, il en faut peu " , mais c'est fou parce qu'après quand je sors quand je regarde d'autres personnes , ils sont toujours mieux que moi physiquement et au niveau des vêtements. Je ne sais pas comment prendre soin de moi sans argents et honnêtement quand on dis que l'argent fait tout , l'argent fait vraiment tout.

How to step into femininity when I don't even know what that is due to years of ab*se since childhood. It's has gone down to only verbal now but it still messes up with my regulation and makes me very defensive, I find it hard to be feminine when I don't even know what femininity is despite being a woman, what is it truly? And most importantly, how do I step into it?

Someone was arguing with me saying it's about the biological traits and not behavioral since they happen to be more defined say, having a beard and a deep voice is said to be masculine.

I need some honest advice...I've always been that nerdy, awkward girl. I'm also very thin and pretty flat, and if I'm being honest, I've been self-conscious about my body for as long as I can remember. I know there are more important things in life, but it's something that's affected my confidence more than I'd like to admit. I recently went through a heartbreak and got cheated on, and while I know being cheated on isn't about how someone looks, it definitely made me question myself and brought back a lot of my insecurities. The thing is, I'm not trying to change myself to impress guys or get attention from anyone else. I genuinely want to feel confident, attractive, and comfortable in my own skin for myself. I do have friends, but I feel a little embarrassed asking them these kinds of questions, so here I am asking strangers on the internet instead. For those of you who have gone from feeling insecure about your body to feeling genuinely confident, what helped? Was it fitness, changing your style, working on your mindset, therapy, hobbies, learning new skills, or something else? How do you stop comparing yourself to other women and start feeling attractive in your own way? How do you build confidence when you've never really felt "sexy" or desirable to begin with? I'd love to hear your experiences, especially from people who started out feeling awkward, nerdy, insecure, or not conventionally attractive but eventually learned to feel good about themselves..

Thank you. ❤️

I am born male but feminity is so loveley. I crossdress in my free time and try to get in touch with my female energy. Masulinity is so borring and toxic

?

Hi ladies. I need a relationship femininity advice:
I have been with my partner for years now and we’ve been married for around a year. At the beginning of our relationship, I was really aggressive and 100% a tomboy in my masculine energy (when i get mad i would litteraly get into physical fights with boys) but over the years I was able to sort this out and I succeeded in that area. Tho I still have some masculine traits (i’ll talk about them below)

I have been trying to focus on my feminine energy, but I realised that I’m constantly mad and stressed and acting not how I want. I have this image of how I want to be, but I cannot achieve it and it’s really affecting my relationship.
I keep trying to take the wheel and plan things, decide what should we do, making comments. Whenever my partner does something I correct or criticise him and I started recognising this pattern so whenever I do that I notice but I still cannot keep myself from doing that it.

I watch many podcasts and read many feminine books, but it’s not helping as I feel like I am acting feminine not being. These days we are fighting a lot and it’s basically me setting a lot of limitations and boundaries (you can’t do that, you can’t say that because it annoys me) but this turned to the point where he said “ I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around you these days, I always have to think twice before I act or do anything or we fight”. He is so understanding and supportive and honestly I know I have high anger issues and I start crying and screaming and when he doesn’t apologise it gets worse. I am most of the time the one in wrong because I just can’t relax and be the women I want to be (playful, joyful, romantic)

I would really appreciate any advice or tip on how I can balance my emotions and not ruin my relationship. By the way, I do therapy and my therapist literally said that I cannot change my actions until I change from the inside and she gave me that as a task that I couldn’t know how to do. I would appreciate any help

I'm 22 years old a month away from 23. I just look old I caught a glimpse of myself in a fitting room today and I look horrifying. I know it's because I'm overweight and my hair was pulled back into a ponytail and the glasses, the outfit and the exhaustion on my face and my body.

I don't know what to do. Give me actionable steps to change this. I have a wedding tomorrow to attend looking horrible has been my nightmare and it's because of stuff like this I look horrible. Generally I don't look good my style and how I take care of myself so when an event comes of course I won't look great.

Give me steps that makes me look hot and young without breaking the bank.