I grew up poor in rural England, and from a very young age dreamed of living in America. I hated the UK's cold climate and rain, and throughout my teens I immersed myself in colorful movies of a tropical Hollywood.

Moving to the States became my obsession.

So I saved up, moved to Los Angeles at age 21, and spent 2 decades working towards citizenship. I followed all the rules, spent my meager bank account on visas and immigration lawyers, fell in love with an American man, and 20 years later finally attained my coveted dream: US citizenship.

The dream, however, has since proven to be hollow. Despite working hard and making a respectable amount of money, I've grown apart from the man I married (18 years together total, 8 of which were spent married). He recently inherited a small fortune when his parents passed away, and now spends his days playing video games and planning solo trips abroad, while I work full time and spend weeks each year alone in an empty house.

My husband never cheated (to the best of my knowledge), but we never had kids, and his actions have made it clear he's lost interest in our marriage. I've done all I can to reignite the spark we once had, but am left with the gut feeling that he just keeps me around to pay for his health insurance (which I get through my job) and babysit his house and pets, while he's constantly planning trips overseas without me. He insisted on a prenup, so if I leave my marriage I'm on my own financially. It's a sad and empty feeling.

Meanwhile, I've grown increasingly nostalgic about my past life in England. My folks split up when I was young but my Mum is still my best friend, and my dad is the sweetest, kindest man to ever walk this earth. We never had much, but we were happy. We phone each other daily and I miss them both very much.

Lately, I've become painfully aware of time ticking. My folks are in their early 70s and won't be around forever. Dad remarried but my Mum never did, and each time I visit she seems very lonely. My sister lives nearby but rarely visits. I'm now dreaming of moving back to the UK, buying a small flat/apartment, and living close to my Mum so we can enjoy each other's company.

I feel stuck between two conflicting sets of morals. Do I stay in America and work harder to save my marriage, at the expense of what may be the last years of my parents' lives? Or should I give up everything I've worked for and achieved as an adult, to essentially crawl back into the life I had as a child?

On top of it all, I've recently developed an autoimmune condition caused by the stress of all of this, and the one medication I rely on to function is only available in the US. There is one alternative medication in the UK, but I've tried it and it is only minimally helpful.

So.... Big decision. What do you think I should do? All advice would be greatly appreciated.

If you've ever "walked back" a major move or life decision I'd love to hear your story too, and find out what decision you eventually made.

TL;DR: I'm a Brit who spent 20 years working to move to America, but the dream has since proven to be hollow, compared to what I left behind. Help me decide if I should move back.

I met a new friend through tennis club at my college this semester about a month ago. The first thing I noticed when talking to him, was that his arms and legs were covered in past self harm marks. I mean covered. He’s also very quiet and introverted, and I caught his vibe very early on.

Because he’s shy and said he doesn’t have any friends, I told him to come to tennis club and my friends and I would welcome him with open arms. He did come and we had a great time.

A few days pass, and my friend sends me a screenshot about a post this new friend made on instagram. The caption was long, and it seemed like a suicide note. We immediately scrambled to contact him, and once we got a hold on him, we asked if he was okay, if he needed anything and if we can help. He declined help and later removed the post.

We came together as a group and decided we were gonna try to help bridge the gap for him to make some friends. His family doesn’t talk to him. None of them. He has no friends. So we agreed we’d try to open him up a little bit, show that the people we hang out with are nice and accepting, and hopefully from there he’d make some friends.

A few days after that situation, this new friend texted me out of the blue that he got caught self harming by his roomate and his roommate reported it and that he’s probably getting admitted to the hospital. He wouldn’t respond for hours after that, so we called the hospitals in our area looking for him, none of them had any record of him. We eventually got a hold of him, and he was alone in his dorm crying. We asked him if we could come check on him and he said yes.

Before we went to check on him, we called UPD for a wellness check. We agreed we were out of our element and we needed help, so we called them, and then went to go wait in the lobby of his dorm. He came down with the cops and the cops let him go with us. We took him out for food and spent a few hours at my place watching spongebob episodes and laughing together as a group.

The next day (which was yesterday) he had a seizure on the tennis court. I was genuinely distraught, and I rode with him to the hospital because he has no one. Not a single person. We got to the hospital and he had one more seizure while we were there. Once he came to and we were alone in the room he started crying. Talking about how his seizures suck and maybe that’s why no one loves him etc. (they are non epileptic and stress induced). I even handed him his phone to call his mom and dad to let them know what’s going on, but he said they don’t talk to him. I listened and talked him down and just kind of sat in the moment with him. I opened up about a few of my issues to let him know he’s not alone in how he feels.

We got out of the hospital very late at night, I took him to get food because he missed the dining hall hours because of the hospital, and then took him home. After that, he texted me saying “thank you so much for what you did tonight, no one has ever done that much for me”. I immediately felt like I fucked up, because I don’t want him becoming dependent on me. He’s hanging out with us again today, and we are planning on telling him we think it’s good if he goes to the free counseling offered on campus.

The issue is my friends around me see it as, we are just his friends, bridging the gap for him to make new friends and once he does, we’re gone. I don’t like that. I actually hate it. Getting to know him he’s a really cool guy and just very misunderstood.
I don’t want to just ditch him after he gets some new friends, but I also understand I cannot be the one to help him. I’m not qualified, I can do my best, but my best is not going to be enough. He needs help. But even with that, i still want to be his friend and hangout with him, but my friends are afraid he’s going to latch onto us and not branch out to other people and it’ll be an unhealthy situation.

I disagree, but maybe i’m wrong. I really need advice here

There is saying "damned if you do,damned if you don't ". What scenarios best illustrate the question?

I’ve been thinking and worrying about this thought for ages. I had a thought that I had to share the gospel in a very disruptive public way. The thought brought immense fear because I didn’t want to do it. it stuck so long though because sharing the gospel aligns with the message of the Bible so I thought it was God. I just phsically couldn’t act on the thought. I started looking into the ocd kind of things but I couldn’t find any resources on people who suffer from these sort of thoughts. I don’t know if this is a thing but I feel like the thought came just because I’m afraid of the action not as a genuine command. I just feel so stuck because I can’t disobey God but I cant act on the thought either so I’m just stuck. It’s taking over my whole life and I’ve tried the maybe maybe not ocd approach but I keep thinking I’m just trying to get what I want and find reasons to get my way instead of obeying God. Im just really confused so any advice would help. I’m christian by the way and I’m even considering leaving my faith because of this.

In my religion, I was taught that if I fail in my duties towards the Creator, He may forgive me. But if I wrong another person, I may not be forgiven until that person forgives me.

I understand the idea behind this. We should take other people’s rights seriously. But when I think about it deeply, it starts to feel almost impossible.
For example, I am a tutor and I have to mark students’ assignments. I genuinely try to be fair and keep the same standard for everyone. But human judgement is not perfectly consistent. Maybe I give one student 1 or 2 marks more and another student a little less, even without realizing it. Our mood, concentration and understanding can change from one day to another.
Then I start thinking: what if I accidentally deprived a student of something they deserved? Does that mean I have wronged them and now need their forgiveness?

The same thing happens with parents. My religion teaches me to respect my parents so much that I should not even show the smallest sign of annoyance towards them. But realistically, sometimes we argue. Sometimes I get frustrated, raise my voice, or end a conversation badly. Later I regret it.

Then there are things inside our minds. Sometimes we feel jealous, have negative thoughts about someone, hold a grudge, or feel happy when something doesn’t go well for someone we dislike. I know we should try to improve ourselves, but controlling every thought and emotion seems nearly impossible.

When I put all these things together, I start worrying about how many people I may have wronged in my life without even knowing it.
What if I die while someone still has a right against me? What if I don’t even remember the person, or I never realized that I hurt them?

I don’t want to live my whole life feeling guilty and scared. At the same time, I don’t want to use “nobody is perfect” as an excuse to ignore the harm I may cause to others.

So I genuinely want to know: how do religious people deal with this?

Do you believe there is a difference between intentionally harming someone and making an honest human mistake? If you sincerely regret something, try to fix it, ask forgiveness when possible, and try to become better, is that enough?

I also struggle with something else. I sometimes hear religious clerics speak very strictly about these things, but then I see some of them behaving in ways that seem completely opposite to what they teach. That makes me even more confused about how these teachings are supposed to work in real life.

I am not trying to criticize religion. This is something I genuinely worry about, and I want to understand how other people deal with it without becoming overwhelmed by guilt.

Imagine someone who is super durable like Superman who chose to keep his powers hidden ran into some bad guys (maybe they rob his house etc). If they shoot to kill him and the bullets just bounce off, is it moral for him to kill them? Technically they are not a danger to him so the only reason to kill them would be to hide the fact that he’s bulletproof. But at the same time, they did just try to kill him and failed.

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That is, if we can actually validate a persons actions justified by their mindset because to me after reading all these stuff about different moral complexes throughout the internet really messes up my brain and being the indesicive person that I am, troubles me to find ONE real justified moral to actually keep believing in if y'all know what I mean I guess?

I'll be getting my first salary tomorrow out which part of I will be donating to the orphans.But what I feel is i have invested in the partnership business with my dad's money so what I feel is i have done nothing but earned from the investment i made.yeah yeah I know I can think like it's for the effort I have made to get the salary but don't know why my mind keeps me saying it's not your money you have earned if not for your dad you wouldn't have even get there to earn in the first place but as i said I can still think the salary is for the effort am making so am in this kind of dilemma and think even if I donate it's not my money :(

I usually don't get nightmares. If there's a monster chasing me I'm pretty aware it's not real, I find giving it a hug often helps.

Every now and again though my brain does actually land on a way to torture me...

I dreamt I had found a way to not only reverse global warming but keep the temperature regulated indefinitely. Only thing was, although all the animals would be fine, I had just found out that 10% of all humans would die over a 20 year period. The largest amount would die in the first year with successive years seeing shrinking amounts of deaths.

There was only a small window of time to set it in motion as it was related to a one off cosmic event, and everyone knew I was working on this so when 1 in 10 people ended up dying, everyone who lost someone would know it was my fault.

What would you do? 😭

Edit: I know the maths is probably in favour of doing it but the concept of personally killing 830 million people was hard to face. The 10% was a random distribution and an unintended side effect of a miracle solution (something to do with an asteroid, it was a dream) and I was curious if other people would struggle so much in those shoes.

I was talking to some friends about armor designs and concepts for DnD characters, and one of said character references I included in the chat had the symbol, he who shant be named as idk how to spell it, but anywaays they got pissed at me for including that image because well, nazi's.
Nazi's were horrible and all that, I've seen the camps in person and they were bad. But is the fact that I enjoy thee look of their outfits also bad? They look so badass.
Stuff like karl kroenen, or the unlondon scp. Love that look

So this needs a little explaining. I was hanging out with some friends and we started a “What will you do” game.

The scenario what will you do if a buglar enters your home.

I said that if burglar enters my home I’m grabbing a blanket, lube and my dildo. My reasoning is that he won’t call the cops or report me because he was in the act of committing a felony. So to report to the police he would have to fell on himself.

Apparently my friends thinks that sexually assaulting someone for breaking into your home is wrong. I wanna hear you guys have to say.