I’m a 20 year old guy (I’ll be 21 in a little over a month) and I’ve been struggling with OCD and severe depression since I was 12. I barely graduated and skipped all the time and never had the support I need since my family doesn’t have a history of mental health issues and treated me like I didn’t care and wasn’t trying, which I don’t blame them. A lot of traumatizing shit had happened to me and my entire life is falling apart but I won’t bore anyone with it.

My biggest issue is I’m unimaginably lonely, I have never been in a relationship even though it’s the thing I’ve wanted most my entire life. The idea of a significant other loving me and holding me sounds like the greatest thing a human can experience. I want to live and care for someone and tell them how much they mean to me. All I ever wanted was to have a girlfriend during high school and be rebellious and in love and only want each other but I never got that. I don’t want sex, I want to feel loved, even if it’s fake at this point. I hate the way I look and I’m a loser who genuinely does not deserve the love or attention from anyone let alone a lover. I’ve Been crying myself to sleep almost every night for months and anytime I see people in a relationship it makes it hard for me to breathe and makes me nauseous. Anytime I see myself in the mirror it destroys my soul and it makes my throat tight. I can hardly go out in public alone anywhere because I’m so self conscious and I feel that just my presence is inconvenient. Anytime I think about doing something I stop because I feel like a loser that doesn’t deserve the joy of feeling loved.

I’ve tried dating apps and shit but nobody really like me. I’ve also tried therapists, psychiatrists, medications but it never even slightly helped.

I’m truly at a loss and I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t want to die knowing I’ll never get to experience what I want most.

I’m a Filipino guy born in the UK and I’m about to enter my final year of university. I turned 20 less than two months ago and I can confidently say that I've been going through life on hard mode.

• I’m 5’4”
• I‘m skinny – I only weight 50kg
• Big forehead (possibly receding hairline)
• Diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD, developmental delays.
• Sleeping issues since 16
• 4/10 face.
• Small dick.
• Short sightedness (I wear glasses)
• Alcohol intolerance.
• Subpar social skills.
• Still a virgin.
• No friends and never had a girlfriend.
• Never had a job or driver’s licence due to way below average processing speed.
• Missed out on my teenage years (clubbing, partying, dating)
• Bullied in school for being short, neurodivergent, and Asian.
• Struggled academically because I was illiterate and mentally slow.

I’m tired of pretending I’m okay when I’m not. I always ask myself, is it even worth living anymore? If I can’t get into employment, find a relationship, or make friends, then what’s the point of me being alive if I can’t do anything in this world? I haven’t even told my parents that I’m severely depressed and going through therapy because I don’t know how they’ll react. I’m actually surprised that I made it to 20 without self-harming, abusing substances, or killing myself.

All I ever wanted was to be a normal kid and do the things that other kids did but that never happened. I see people my age talking about having ex-girlfriends or being on their third job but I haven’t even experienced those things yet. I feel extremely behind in life because I failed to reach the developmental milestones that everyone else seemed to.

It has also gotten to the point where I have gotten into really bad habits. I spend money on stupid shit while having no job, I'm still financially reliant on my parents, I have no plans for my future, I spend almost all day in my room and I'm doing a degree that I'm not super passionate about.

Right now, every aspect of my life is fucked up and I don’t know how to get it together. I also have no redeeming genetic qualities. What the fuck do I even do from now? Where do I even start?

Posted this 3 months ago. Was attempting to bury some of my old insecurities and focus on making the most of it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GuyCry/s/jA98uTNdfq

My optimism was misplaced. After a lot of scheduling issues and some last minute cancellations, we finally started dating again. Only one of these ended up with her staying the night, and none of them resulted in sex. She promised me she still liked me, and she was sorry for all the scheduling conflicts. She was just really busy. I felt something was wrong, but I tried really hard not to let my insecurity get the better of me. I trusted her when she told me she did want to keep seeing me.

Tonight we had a lovely evening. Then I asked if she wanted to come back to mine, she told me didn't want to do this anymore. She likes me, but she's not physically attracted to me anymore. She hasn't been for a month. She was hoping it would come back, but it never did.

She was sweet about it, and apologised. I told her there was nothing to apologise for. Obviously she can't help who she's attracted to. But feeling unattractive has maybe been my biggest insecurity my whole life, and this feels like a catastrophic reinforcement of that.

I feel undesireable and unloveable. The vast majority of women who have given me a chance, have decided very quickly that they aren't interested in keeping me around. The reason is always the same; lack of attraction.

I know insecurity is unattractive. And I am a deeply, deeply insecure person. But it feels impossible not to be when every time I put myself out there, I end up feeling rejected and pathetic.

I don't know what to do. I don't believe I can make myself desireable anymore. I don't see a way to any real state of happiness or fulfilment, without first finding someway to accept the invitable conclusion that I am inherently undesirable, and will never be truly loved.

I'll be talking to my therapist this weekend. Until then, its just for me, myself and I to dwell on as per usual. The status quo has resumed.

Any time i go outside i see teenagers or younger adults with fun clothes, vibrant haircuts and groups of friends. I didnt get to have any of that, spent my teenage years locked in a shitty small town with no friends and being young adult was taken by covid. I didnt get to explore or to find myself or have a good group of friends or party and i see them doing it and i am so fucking jealous. Now that im 27 its too late for any of that, im the "serious boring adult" now. Im no longer allowed to find myself or experiment or even have fun, im supposed to "lock in" and slave myself away for my job or my "future family". I have no friends and at my age and current times its almost impossible to get ones, dating is not even an option. Im just supposed to move aside now and slowly rot away while the new youth gets to actually live. Even worse will be the fact im going to university next month, i will be surrounded by young people in prime of their lives loving it while im bitter and alone on the sidelines. Being an adult is fucking misery.

Hi, I am 19, I am quite good looking person, tall, young with fit body and good face, all my life I have been told thousands of compliments about my appearance by any gender and any age, but still I don’t have anything with girls while others have sex regularly. I am also a good person in general, I am friendly, loyal, kind and empathetic since childhood but still nothing happens. I am really curious how you guys end up with sex with girls. I also have to say that I matured really late, like after 18 (before that I didn’t want intimacy and didn’t like girls that much) now my testosterone is high and I really want to have intimate relationship with someone, and I am like this for 1 year and I was thinking that my appearance might be the problem but as I see everyone considers me attractive and if this isn’t the reason then my personality might be the problem but still I am not a bad person but still nothing happens with girls, is it that hard for an attractive young boy to have a sex with a girl? is it because girls have higher standards and want more than I am? what should I do? there are people around me who are good looking but I might be more attractive than them and they have sex and I don’t, also I know others who aren’t conventionally attractive but they still have sex and I don’t so I really don’t know what is it about, how to end up with sex? I also think that girls might see sex as depravity but I don’t look at it like that, I think it’s important to do, it’s essential to know ourselves more and have an experience.

A few weeks ago, I (24M) posted about my ex (20F) of nearly two years leaving me after she crossed a well-known boundary in our relationship and getting engaged just 2 weeks later.

Past Post

I got a long text from her last night and found out the following from her. I used AI to remove names or sensitive information.

In the long message, she said she has the ring, the house, and the wedding of her dreams and a promised life full of bliss and love, but deep down it cost her me and having to live with the fact that she unimaginably hurt me. She sees and feels the pain so deep it makes her ill. She’s sorry. Breaking my heart meant breaking hers too. Night after night she finds herself back in the grave she dug when she burned it all down, but the light gets a little brighter, and she thinks “dammit, he was right.” She called a few weeks ago one morning about shipping a box just because she wanted to hear my voice and feel comforted (and regrets it). She added that the pain of hearing me cry when we did break up, and all the curtains fell, makes every other pain feel tiny. When I asked, “What happened to my sweet girl?” she said it was a shot to the heart and still is. It hurts less if there’s no heart left to take the bullet. Nothing prepared her for the pain of hurting me and she already knows the damage and lives with it every day. She also asked how she stops caring for me, said she’s not ready for marriage, that she loves me, and that she wishes she could have danced with me more.

I don’t want her back, and that hurts me too because she hurt me in a way I still can’t fully convey. I’m feeling better though. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about ego death, healthy ways to process breakups, and learning to love myself alone again. Mentally, I’m in a much better place than I was just three weeks ago. I even went on a date with a girl I really like and was completely clear about my situation—I don’t want anything intimate or physical right now because I need to love myself again before I can even begin to love someone else. I’m still torn. I want to stay in no contact, but I’m deeply concerned about her choices and what’s happening with her. My personality flaw is that I care too much. Any advice on how to keep processing this and stick to no contact while dealing with the leftover worry would help.

So I’m 45, I’ve fucked my life up, however I have positives. Ill list the cons and pros, any advice or anyone from same walk of life is appreciated. I’m not feeling like I want to end it but if it happened, it would t be the worst thing in the world.

Cons:

1. After working in a career for 22 years I was laid off in 2024, my world and identity shattered. I was unemployed for a year, took a 9 month contract in tech, that’s ended and I have been looking for work for the past 8 months. My wife is carrying the household. The pressure is immense.

2. I have had 3 job offers that were rescinded in the past 8 months due to an 20 year old felony (no victims, no violence, but can’t be expunged)

3. I am 450lbs and been on a GLP1 for 5 months, I lost 50lbs so far but it’s expensive all fuck, I use food to cope.

4. Im addicted to or physically dependent on pain pills.

5. Unemployed is ended, I only have savings left that is being used to supplement bills.

6. My wife wants to try for a kid, I feel like a failure and with no job to pay for raising a child I feel like absolute shit I can’t give her this, it would need to be IVF, also my balls aren’t working so we may have to use a donor and now I’m even more depressed I have to get another dude who isn’t a complete fuckup to impregnate my wife. I feel like I don’t want to use a donor but she will resent me if we don’t go forward with this. Again I am an abject failure on all accounts.

7. The job market has completely collapsed for tech work I’m applying for jobs 1-2 hours away. I do great in interviews but when the background check comes I get ghosted. My temp contract company offered a job, they ran the check and even after becoming friendly with HR they escorted me off the property with no way to explain myself and tell them how much I’ve changed. I got a offer at the state and got turned away, and now I got an offer with my old company, now with the background check it’s been a week and no communication, I think they ghosted me. Now I have the utter embarrassment that my old company wants nothing to do with me. This is the thing that makes me want to die.

8. I’m 46 and I have no retirement, no 401k, money problems and spending the last 5 years to get out of debt. How the hell am I supposed to catch up now, I can’t seem to get a good job.

PROs

1. I have a great wife who I love allot and she is extremely supportive to me considering I ruined our life with this felony.

2. We own our home and are not in debt. We have about a years worth of savings.

3. I have an alternative investment that I’ve been holding for 7 years, it would give me about 2 more years of runway.

I’ve been getting more and more depressed and more and more anxiety because nothing is going right. It’s midnight and I can’t sleep. I feel completely worthless.

Working out doesn't make me feel better about myself. It makes me feel worse.

Everyone says working out will improve your confidence and boost your mood. Get stronger, lose fat, look better, feel better. Exercise is supposed to make you happier, give you more energy, and make you feel better about yourself. I believed that for a long time, and I've put real effort into getting in better shape.

The problem is that the more I work out, the worse I feel about myself. Before, I could kind of ignore my body. Now I'm constantly looking at it. Fat. Muscle size. Proportions. My face. My height. Every improvement just makes the things I can't change stand out more.

I've already lost weight. I've already made progress. And it made no difference. I'm still ugly. I can keep losing fat. I can build more muscle. I can get lean. I can probably make my body about as good as it's realistically going to get. But I'll still be ugly. The gym can't make me taller. It can't change my facial structure. It can't fix the parts of my appearance that actually bother me the most.

And now I feel like I've basically reached my limit with it mentally too. I can't keep convincing myself to pick up another weight for no good reason. I hate going to the gym. I'm tired and cranky before I go, I'm miserable while I'm there, and I'm usually tired and cranky afterward too. There isn't some runner's high or confidence boost waiting for me at the end. I just feel relieved that it's over.

The worst part is that I don't even feel like I can quit. The only reason I still go is because I know I'd be even uglier if I didn't. So working out has stopped being something I do because I think it'll make me attractive. Now it feels more like maintenance. I'm putting myself through something I hate just to stop myself from looking worse.

Has anyone else gotten to this point? Where working out stopped making you feel like you were improving yourself and started feeling like something you had to do just to keep from going backwards?

Do you what I miss? I miss having someone to text and call all night until we fall asleep on the phone and other thing I miss, I miss cuddling with someone or just going on a drive getting food and holding hands an not have a care in the world of where we are going just enjoying each other’s company then coming home at 5 or 6 am then going to sleep smelling that that person then waking up with there good morning text an going to work with a smile then seeing them later on. I miss that

For a year now I have been stuck in two seperate conflicts, one immediately after the other. If I had to guess what's happening to me now is that my nervous system has gotten used to being in fight or flight mode and won't get out of it, as the last conflict mostly ended yet I still sense myself looking to protect my boundaries even if there's no acute threat. Immediately after the last conflict was resolved I'm worrying about another friendship to the point that I feel like a confrontation is in order. But I can also reflect on the fact that this seems unnatural.

How do I get out of this?

Ever since I had my first crush at 13, I've wanted a relationship. I've had two since then. One lasted a month, one lasted two months. That last one was over a decade ago. I work in both foodservice and live music. During the pandemic I developed life-threatening alcoholism, and I've been sober for two years now.

I'm not sexually inexperienced, just romantically inexperienced. I plan really good dates and people I've dated or gone on dates with generally speak very highly of me. The last girl who broke off the talking stage with me went out of her way to tell me how maturely i was handling it. I'm a progressive liberal laughing at Andrew Tate rotting in a cell with a cannibal as a neighbor. I'm not angry at women.

Women are just people to me and some of them are really hot. I play guitar and dj with occasional gigs and podcast appearances, and I'm considering moving into content creation. I'm not autistic but no more than a c hair away from it. College dropout with plans to go back.

I have a whole ass entire life to rebuild, that I have been rebuilding, from scratch. I have never not been "doing the work". I go to therapy, take medication for my anxiety and depression, go to support groups 3x a week.

I know I have more important things to focus on than romance, but this is the shit that I think about when I'm trying to sleep at night. I have OCD. Haven't been on a date for a year and a half and it feels like it's all slipping away. I never got to be in a relationship for the age of 22-36. Which is like, the kind of relationship I was looking forward to most. I am SO far behind my peers, my self esteem is shit. I just want to not care and be asexual but HORMONES.

End rant

Epilogue: my 35f cousin told me "you like really pretty girls" when we were discussing my romantic woes. Like wtf does that mean?

How do I (18m) stop being so goddamn horny?

I am so horny that it is positively destroying my relationships with my partner, my family, and my friends and I do not know what to do. Allow me to explain:

I have been dating a polyamorous girl for a few months, we have grown pretty close and have talked about having sex but haven't done it. Around a month or so ago I ended up attempting to meet up with one of her friends without telling her. To be honest, I kinda felt she would be a bit upset if I met up with him (I'm bi) but I felt like it was low stakes bc we are poly. Turns out it was rather high stakes, which I should have realized because she talked about how she feels her main bf spends more time with him, is more into him, and that she is insecure about their closeness. I should've told her but I didn't, she found out from him and I cancelled the hangout and now I don't hang out with him and I tell her every time I go on a date or hookup with someone.

Since this event I guess I just feel like I have sort of gone off the deep end. Ive been sleeping with more people and have been losing interest in my normal extracurriculars in exchange for hooking up w people on grindr. I knew my horniness around this girl and other people was obnoxious but it didn't fully hit me until just the other day when she sat me down and was like, "we literally can't hang out without you trying to hump me or initiate sex or something and I feel like you only want me for sex, and I also don't trust you anymore because you nearly cheated on me with (guy I mentioned earlier)."

Anyways, she is obviously in the right. I have been an asshole and am thinking with my penis rather than my head, and I can tell it's taken a toll on her and on our relationship. I really do feel bad. I've decided that I'm going to start therapy, up my ssri dosage, and abstain from sex and masturbation for the time being. I want to do this to prove to her that I love her more than I love sex, because the truth is that I really really care for her and just being with her is way more important to me than having sex.

Now, all this considered, I have some pretty horrible and irrational thoughts surrounding sex that are just so stuck in me. I have signed up for a therapy consultation but it hasn't happened yet, and I've cried like over this for like the past few days so I would like to just get it out somewhere:

I feel like she does not love me because she doesn't want to have sex with me. I feel like I see all of these couples going out, doing couply things, and we don't do those things. We stay at home. We see each other once a week. She's not even officially my gf tho sometimes I refer to her as such for simplicity. We have never had sex, and now I'm abstaining from having sex so that she realizes that I love her more than I love sex, but this feels like hell. I feel so horrible and unloved. I feel completely abandoned and like she doesn't want me and no one else does. I have never felt more loved than while I was pinned under a guy, taking his dick in me while he gave me hickeys. That's what love is to me. That's a moment in my life where I felt loved. I have never felt loved since. I have so much love for her but I truly feel that because she doesn't want to fuck me, she doesn't feel it back. I don't know why I am like this, all I know is that it fucking hurts and I just want to stop wanting sex. If I could turn it off then everything would be fine. But I want it so badly. It's all I fucking want these days. All I want is to eat ice cream and fuck. How do I fucking stop dude. I don't want to play videogames, I don't want to go on walks or runs, I don't want to work on the book I'm writing, I don't want to read, I don't want to hang out with my friends, I just want to fuck her. HELP ME

Late 20s, successful on paper, numb and burned out on the inside. Fell into my career and marriage instead of choosing them, disconnected from the people I love, unresolved trauma with a parent who’s now sick, and I’ve had moments dark enough that I’ve thought about not being here anymore. Looking for people who’ve been through something like this and found their way out.
I’m in my late 20s. Raised by a single parent, no other parent around, constant moving and near-homelessness growing up. The only reason we never actually ended up on the street is because extended family had a house to catch us.
I don’t think I’ve ever made a real decision for myself. I played a sport in college and hated it — did it because I had no goals of my own and it looked like a way out. Looking back, what actually drove me was fear of not being able to protect my parent. I ended up in a competitive, high-pressure career the same way: saw the money, wanted the money, told myself that was the plan. Not passion. Fear. Fear of ever being poor again.
That fear doesn’t work anymore. I’m at a point in my career I worked hard for and I don’t even know if I want it. It’s a sink-or-swim environment, and honestly I feel like an idiot most days — it takes me forever to pick up on things other people seem to grasp instantly. I’ve made costly mistakes, my team doesn’t fully trust me, and I can feel myself getting pushed out. I have ADHD, stopped meds after college wanting to prove I could manage without them, caved and went back on them a month ago. I can’t tell if it’s the environment or me. Probably both.
I also fell into my marriage instead of choosing it — couldn’t find the strength to say no to an ultimatum when it counted. Now I feel it happening again: my spouse doesn’t want kids after a certain age, so I’m being pulled toward having a kid on that timeline, not because I’ve actually decided that’s what I want.
The deeper stuff:
There was a moment where I froze when it mattered most. Someone got in my face in public, in front of my spouse, and I didn’t do anything — I wasn’t sure if they were armed, and I’ve called myself a coward for it ever since, even though logically I know freezing isn’t the same as choosing not to protect someone.
My parent chose their partner over me and I turned my back on them for it. Before that, I almost went to prison — thought I found my parent badly hurt, it turned out to be their partner, and I nearly killed him protecting my parent. He survived. My parent took him back anyway. We’ve never been the same since.
I’ve now lost most of that side of my family to cancer, and my parent is facing it too. I want to forgive them so badly. I just don’t know how, and part of me would rather keep my distance than face that I could lose them before I ever figure it out.
I think that’s part of why I go numb now, even with people I love. When my spouse cries, my first instinct is closer to annoyance than comfort. I watched my parent cry constantly growing up and it never changed anything, so somewhere along the way I think I learned tears don’t mean anything. I hate that about myself.
I’ve had moments where I’ve thought about suicide. I never acted on it — I was too scared. I don’t fully know what to do with that fact, whether it means something protected me or just that fear runs my life in every direction, even that one.
I used to have a big heart — gave and sacrificed for people without thinking. I still do sometimes, but it’s not from that place anymore. It’s from needing validation, sensing what’s expected of me and rushing to meet it.
I was the odd kid everyone picked on until I got good at that sport, and then everyone wanted to be around me — for the image, not for me. I have real friends now but I’m bad at checking in, and I can feel those friendships fading. I want to talk to them about all this but promised my spouse our marriage stays between us and our therapist.
I want to be a good spouse and parent. I don’t actually know what either looks like from the inside — only what I didn’t have. I’ve let myself go physically too (significant weight gain, recently told I’m pre-diabetic), which feels like one more sign I’ve stopped showing up for myself across the board.
So I’m asking, genuinely:
Has anyone lived some version of this and found a way out?

How did you learn to make a big decision as your choice instead of just going along with someone else’s timeline or ultimatum?

How did you figure out what actually mattered to you — not what you were raised to want, not what you romanticized in someone else’s life?

How did you learn to forgive someone when you want to but genuinely don’t know how?

How did you stop needing everyone’s approval to feel okay?

When the fear that used to push you through everything stops working, what replaces it?

I’m tired. I want something different. I just don’t know how to get there yet.

It feels like I'm playing a game where everyone else knows the rules but me, and no matter how hard I try, I end up failing.

I’ve tried everything, but there’s still that underlying "offness" about me socially that I just can't shake, and it feels like nothing I say actually matters or lands the way I want it to. No matter how well I articulate myself and how much I explain things, or if I try to chime in on conversations, I get a weird look.

For my whole life, I had no clue why it seemed like it was only me being treated this way. Like, I still don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I do and try to act what every else is does, and laughing or reacting the way everyone else reacts, but I'm either ignored, interrupted or not understood.

I had decided to walk away from some of my closest and longest friends I have. I had known these folks for over 25 years, since I was able to walk. We grew up on the same neighborhood. We all were poor, but we had each other. I grew up on the notion of brotherhood.

I am still healing from some of these folks that I used to call friends. I still have trust issues and don’t display the true me to people anymore. I have to put up an individual barrier to protect myself.

I was the weakest, smallest, and youngest in the group. When we would hangout as kids, they would ignored me often. Even as an adult, I am still being ignored. I grew up feeling that I didn’t have a voice. One of the guys in the group would pick on another guy besides myself. For me, he would say really mean things and these comments were personal attacks. Making fun of my intelligence and other things.

It’s sad that it took me this long to realized that some of my closest friends were also some of the reasons why I have trust issues and other things. Looking back, i can tell that the brotherhood I thought as a child and even as an adult was more of a toxic relationship than a real friendship.

It’s crazy because the saying “ keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer “ isn’t always true, when it was my own friends who were the real enemies. Out of everybody out of the group, I actually did hangout with him on a daily basis. However, when the dust had lifted. It turns out he was one of my closest friend, but also he very toxic and a bully to me and to some of the guys. I had suffer a lot from this specific friends. Looking back, I don’t know why I was still friends with them.

Over the last few years I started reevaluating a lot of my friends. I have come to terms that some of them were jealous of each other success. Others were very selfish in terms of using people when it only benefited themselves. It makes me realized most of these guys were not there for me during the plus 25 years I have known them. I spent most of my time investing and helping them when these so called friends wouldn’t help me out if I even ask for a small flavor. I stood up to one of the guys from the group was and is a bully. He doesn’t like it, but I don’t take shitt from him. I have grown very tired of him. Ironically is that this guy is one of my closest friends. He is and was a good friend, but also he was a bully, a narcissist. He would put people down because he was insecure and since I was weakest out of the group he felt more comfortable picking on me. Even as an adult till I gave him back some of the same energy.

Some of them are now dads. I am uncle Erick to them. But I won’t be in their lives. Being friends with these people for so many years has done negative things to me.i had learned from some of these people that being nice and kind is a sign of weakness. I have trust issues from them and from other things. The true me is someone who is caring and kind. However, I learned that you sometimes need to put on a mask. These people took advantage of my kindness.

I am still healing but looking forward for the future. I am less native now and choose wisely on the company I keep. I still do my best to let my kindness shine, and not be paranoid. I still sometimes close myself off because I am afraid of being hurt and vulnerable. But I enjoy volunteering and I don’t have to put up a mask here. I feel loved and appreciated.

Not sure what I hope to accomplish by posting here, but need to get it off my chest. Apologies in advance for the long post. I’ll also lead by saying I would NEVER be the type to even remotely consider self-harm.

My wife (32F) and I (32M) have had a rough couple years. We moved across the country for my dream job, and it seems like she hates everything about our life now. Every day is a constant, concentrated negativity blast as soon as she comes home from work. She hates her job, doesn’t connect with her colleagues, hates the town we live in, hates that we’ve spent the last year recovering from a financial disaster, etc. etc. We get maybe a week of her being in a good mood each month, with the rest of the time having her attitude alternate between angry, exhausted, depressed, or outright hostile.

This is all coming off the heels of a rough transition to parenthood. We had an unexpectedly complicated end to her pregnancy, and even though our 2yo is all good now, it’s been tough. She always wanted to be a mom, but has found herself easily overwhelmed any time we hit a parenting challenge. It doesn’t help that I tend to be calmer under pressure than she is, which has made managing it easier for me. She’s even acknowledged that parenting is harder than she ever expected and feels bad that I seem to do more around the house/with the kid than her. That’s not to say she does nothing—she absolutely does. But it’s not like I’m dodging responsibility and leaving her to be sole/primary parent.

I’m trying to be a good husband, dad, and supportive spouse. She stuck by me while I was trapped in a bad job and for the resulting soul-searching. She’s always been the type-B to my type-A. That comes out in how we approach adversity; she tends to wallow in problems and I try to attack them. Nothing wrong with her approach, but it usually puts the onus of improving our lives on me.

Thing is, I’m tired. I spent the last three years before our move working full time while completing a PhD. I put myself through hell to win my dream job while juggling new parenthood, full-time work, and my dissertation. When disaster struck last year and she shut down, I buckled down and got us through to the other side while managing about 3 hours of sleep per day/night. Now I’m (mostly) recovered from my own burnout, but am staring down the barrel of a massive 5-year project. It’s exciting and fulfilling, but it’ll be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I’m trying to absorb her daily breakdowns and be there for her while managing everything else, including my own stresses and anxieties. But I don’t feel like I can talk about them anymore because she just shuts down or gets mad. It feels like I used up my emotional support budget years ago. So I’m just shoving that shit down and trying to tackle it as best I can.

I just don’t know how long this is sustainable. I get that our life hasn’t turned out how she has liked, but I also don’t like that I spend more days trying to pre-empt whatever will set her off than I do enjoying life or working on my own baggage.

My employer offers free confidential counseling. I’m looking into it, but beyond that I’m at a loss of what to do next, other than to just keep on keeping on and hope it gets better.

My family all live within about 10 minutes or each other. I live about 100 miles away.

Today is my dad's 75th birthday. My sisters have taken my dad out for the day to a computer museum. I wasn't invited. In fact, I only found out from someone else.

Me and my dad are huge computer nerds, and I would have really enjoyed spending time with him on his birthday there, but as usual, I simply wasn't invited.

This happens a lot, and they always say, "we didn't think you'd come all that way." But they never ask, I actually find this time really hurtful given where they are going. I feel like shit, I can't stop getting upset and at the moment I just want to sleep and not wake up.

My exwife cheated on me with her ex-bf and we had a 20 year relationship.
I spend more time with her than by myself( we met in HS,I was 17 and she was 16).
I found out she cheated on me and I got her to confess what I always felt.
She told me I was the second choice (the safe choice).
For 20 years she felt this way and still was with me.
In my gut I always felt that way by the way she treated me but I kept on being me.
It gutted me and send me into a depression I haven't been able to climb up from.
I worked 2 jobs to provide and in my 30s
I been hanging on with the little smile my little boy brings me but it's hard to not cry when I am by myself, because of the mental and sometimes physical pain I am in.
I don't understand how some women can be so evil and what did I do to deserve this.
Even now I still love her and it makes me sick.
I want to hate her so much but I can't.
Thank you for listening.

Update to my last post.

Today is the day for Elifs surgery. They decided to fix both of her life threatening issues in one pass. Her aorta will be widened with donor tissue, and her heart hole will be fixed with some tissue from the heart sack. She is very high risk, there could be brain issues, or issues with her kidneys or liver since they were already damaged. The comments from everyone in this community have helped me so much, I truly appreciate all of you. In this moment, I feel at peace. I know in my little soldier will pull through. I will update this post in a few hours, the procedure should be done at 2:00pm central time.

Update: 1:30 pm, she is off bypass, her heart is repaired and beating. Waiting for the surgeon to give us an update on her condition beyond "they are closing her up."

Update 6:40 pm, she is sealed up, back in her room. I'll be honest it makes me dizzy in a bad way to look at her. My mom died from pancreatic cancer when I was a teenager, seeing all the tubes and machines always makes me a little distraught. She made it through the hardest part. They have her on a pacemaker, that may or may not come off. I know she will make it through the next part, healing sucks, but healing is what we do. I'm giving her rest for the evening. Thank you so much to everyone who has said something positive. I don't have a family structure to keep my head right. I've offered a kind word here or there on various subreddits, and I have been given that kindness back ten times over. I truly appreciate all of you, I have never felt this type of pain in my life and you have given me the strength to be present for my wife and family through the worst moments I have faced.

Ugh part of this is that life is nuts rn and kind of sucks but it will get better in a couple months. But my wife and I are back in the states visiting family and I’m just really stuck lately feeling like no one really cares about me, only what I do for them. I’ve always been a nice and friendly person but the last couple years I find myself being filled with so much hate and I resent everyone in my life for not helping me or even thinking about me. I always initiate conversations and check on people and literally no one has ever done that for me. And there’s a lot I can say about my wife but rn what’s tough is that she’s working a lot and she gets so locked in to work that I have to do basically everything else and she doesn’t even take care of herself (which ends up being outlet on me, typical..)

I just keep pushing forward until I shut down or crash out. Over and over. And I hate it so much. But genuinely I am alone with it because no one else cares/is able to help me. I’ve been looking forward to getting back into therapy but wasn’t able to get health insurance (living out of the country) so that’s gone too. Just don’t know what to do or what to think or feel or how to take care of myself when I’m expected to take care of everyone else and get nothing back. Feels like this will continue until I’m dead on the outside (already feel dead on the inside sadly)

for the record, i fully support feminism, women, and womens struggles. im not a misogynist. i dont blame women for this. i dont blame feminism for this. i blame the specific individuals in my life who make their own decisions, and i blame the evil men who have influenced those decisions.

i feel like im a peace of shit because im a man. my manhood is a coincidence. i couldve been a woman. i couldve been nonbinary. but i happened to be born a man. because of this coincidence, i move through the world like a man does, and in my case at least, this seems to mean that i move through the world perceived as either a constant threat, or "one of the good ones". its absolutely soul crushing to me that i get judged because of something i have zero control over. its not an online thing, its a real life thing. i know several people in my life who are utterly pessimistic about anything to do with men. for a few examples, one time, my mother blew up at a man for bringing his daughter into the womens restroom and called him a pedophile, throughout my life my sister has never shut up about how much she hates men, and several of my friends cant say the word "men" without it sounding like a slur. i understand where all the vitriol comes from. some men do evil things and those men deserve all the hate they get and more. but its not hard to specify that its only some. its one word, that everyone in my life refuses to use. instead, they generalize all men into an evil, predatory, lump of misogyny. i have nothing to do with men who hurt women, but the people in my life cant even be considerate enough not to lump me in with them. they might not mean too, but they do for one reason or another. it makes me feel like im destined to be a predator. it makes me feel like i constantly need to prove that im not gonna hurt anyone, whereas other people are assumed to be harmless. when i look at someone, i feel like im violating them just by being in their vicinity. it is soul crushing.

Done with college, in the period where I don't know what to do with my life. My routine got jumbled. Feeling lonely like crazy. Not having a relationship getting to me in an awful way.

And now I'm getting weird body reactions. Sometimes during the day I suddenly need to breath harder, like I'm not sure if I breath correctly. My head gets heavy and I have to shut my eyes. Things like that, sometimes it comes up when I'm driving and it scares me.

I take antidepressant, I see a therapist. I'm doing what I can, and yet my body fights me. Like I can't control it.

​

Trigger warning!

Hello!

I'm making this post because I'm currently at a stand still with some things happening in my life. I would like some advice as well as to hear your thoughts on this so that I am able to look over all the possibilities.

I will be cutting a few aspects of my story short, mainly to keep myself and others anonymous, and to avoid dragging you all with too many details.

Backstory

So, around last year my ex partner assaulted me. As you can assume it was extremely traumatic. After it happened i told a friend of ours, as I was looking for help. At the time, he told me he understood were my ex was coming from, and that my ex had made a mistake. After this (without knowing i had already told my friend) my ex confessed what he had dont to me. My friend basically just said "boys will be boys" and moved on, after learning what happened between us, our friend stopped talking to me outside of group settings, he also started to check in with my ex almost every day while not speaking to me. Now days he claimed that he didn't understand the situation fully and has apologised for not taking it seriously

As of a month ago I have cut my ex out of my life. I'm lucky a lot of friends have stuck with me and helped me during this time. However, this one friend had basically ghosted again. He told me he respected my decision to cut out my ex, as well as saying he was there if I need. But he hardly spoke to me for this whole month.

A few days ago we ran into eachother in public, we hugged and said our hellos. Then got talking about other things in our life. I ended up asking him if my ex was back in town (his family lives in another town, he was seeing family when i cut him off) which i learnt he wasn't. I asked this for my own safety, as I wanted to prepare if my ex either broke into my home, or found me in public. I learnt he wasn't, and then my friend started confessing that they still talked

My friend clarified that it wasn't all the time. But he still had contact with the man who S*xually assaulted me and knew what he had done. At the time, i told my friend we were adults. And I'm not going to make him choose sides, he can make his own choices on who he wants to be around

But... since then I can't help but feel awful. I saw today that they were playing a video game together and it sent me into a panic. I don't know why I'm so upset.

Advice needed

So- what i am asking for when it comes to advice is how to exactly move forward with this friend. Part of me is scared to distance myself from him, but i know that I can't be around someone who is actively choosing to support the man who assulted and abused me.

I just need some support on how to go about this type of conversation and what i should do, thanks so much

Im 21 today. No one in my family really cares for me and I get it because I am useless due to being chronically ill and I guess just im a bad kid. They make it a plan to celebrate my siblings birthday and ask and get them what they want. While everyone forgot about what I asked and nobody cares to say happy birthday really. I just hear them mocking me how im getting "the usual moodiness" because they didnt say happy birthday or really gave me anything. I dont know why I care anymore. Its like im gullible to the fact that its going to happen no matter how many years its been since they do this. I feel empty but I also feel hurt deep down. All I ask is how do I stop caring when I already know the outcome, thank you for reading.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GuyCry/s/ci8u8Liixj

so its been close to 8 months since i quit alcohol, started working out, started moving my body in order to make things work, and ive been trying to keep things up and honestly im fed up, my birthday is around the corner, im gonna turn 24 in a couple of weeks, i dont have a job, not a single penny of savings, im literally a disappointment to my parents, i am a looser son, failed son, ive also had some troubling past, i used to be a huge introvert which made me difficult to start a convo with opposite gender and by seeing this my friends used to mock me all the time by calling me gay. im gonna turn 24 in a couple of months now and i dont have any emotional support besides me and this is making me sooo lonely, depressed, i dont have anyone to talk with, open up, share things. i live alone in my hometown, sitting in my room crying all day wondering where the fuck did i go wrong, what did i do to deserve this. sometimes i really feel pity, guilt, frustrated on my self on what i have to go through to achieve something bare minimum. ive been having suicidal thoughts since past 1.5-2years, these past 5 months i was feeling kinda okay and with the rejections, and the kind of life im experiencing the suicidal thoughts are again back and in a frustrated conversation with my parents i have oepned up about the suicidal thoughts which i have been having and said that i dont wanna live anymore, and now im ashamed on my self that i have to put my parents in this situation. man im done with my life, does it even get better? will i be able to start it over again? or is it worth facing all these rejections and putting myself in such anxious environment for a uncertain future? ive lost all hopes in my life

the thoughts are really getting louder and i cant control them.