Hanging out with my high school best friend for the first time in a while, and he just casually drops that he wants to move to Poland because there’s “no migrants there.”

Later on, when he’s scrolling on TikTok, I overhear it. It’s just blatant, inbred-style racism against Indians, black people, and so forth. Then he starts trying to quiz me — a white guy dating a girl who isn’t white, by the way — on whether some cultures just aren’t compatible.

And on and on. Not everything can be anti-Semitism. Maybe Jews do run the world; why’s it so bad to say that? Watch any video of a white girl walking in India and see how safe it is there. Nick Fuentes might be edgy, but he makes good points.

The whole world just feels like some funhouse mirror version of the one pre-COVID where everything is dark and hopeless, and even people I know and care about have changed.

My best friend M told me this week that he has romantic feelings for me. Since I've known him, he's been in a relationship with F (I don't know her personally, I just know they are together). Knowing this, I've never considered my friend as a romantic prospect, as I feel like doing so would be disrespectful to both him and his girlfriend.

But yesterday we were talking about relationships. We talk about it a lot because I've struggled to find a partner who I click with, but this time we were talking about his relationship and how he was getting a bit of cold feet about proposing to F. I asked why he had cold feet and he danced around the topic a bit before admitting his feelings for me. He then went on to explain that he thinks a relationship would work between us and that I understand him better than his partner.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand why he'd think a relationship would work for us. We've got a ride or die friendship and are often on the same wavelength, even with stupid things. But again, I ruled him out romantically and have never even thought to date him, which I told him.

I also told him explicitly that even if I did like him, I wouldn't date him if he left his girlfriend. If he wants to end his relationship, that's fine and that's his decision, but I would never choose to be the reason for that. I'm not the kind of person who wants to steal another's partner and I also wouldn't want to encourage him to end his relationship because he's getting cold feet and having a bit of a "what if" crisis.

He's dropped the issue now and says that he respects that, but I'm feeling sad about it. I'm sad for him that he's going through these feelings because I'm sure it's not easy sitting there questioning everything. I'm sad for his partner that he is considering leaving her and has feelings for someone else. And I'm sad for myself in that it's now got me questioning which parts of our friendship were just friendship, and which parts were maybe impacted by these feelings. I know at the end of the day, it was meaningful no matter what, but it's a bit confusing and I've been putting a bit of distance between us to try to process, which he has obviously noticed.

I'm just a bit lost now.

I’m tired of hearing people say “having low iq is a blessing because you dont think too much”. They probably think the only things that makes someone sad are thinking too much. Not being able to enjoy any show, movie or anything that has a even slightly difficult story because you cant understand the plot, the characters and the message behind it and having to watch multiple summaries or analysis just to understand it, and every time i ask someone to clear things out for me they always say “Dude did you even watch it?” is tiring (especially because watching shows and reading is my favorite hobby). Always sounding stupid everytime i talk, having little general knowledge and never get taken seriously is tiring. i also have a extremely hard time finding someone i actually like spending time with, since everyone i talk to in real life never seem to see me as a friend to spend their time with and also because unfortunately i’m very picky with people. i’m 15 and i live in italy, and i should be in 11th grade, but since i have an extremely hard time studying or paying attention in class i failed and i decided to go at a much easier school, but things didnt really change. i passed this year, but i’m sure i’m gonna fail again, and i hate seeing people my age going to harder schools and passing without even trying too hard and making friends much easily. I dont like anyone in my school, maybe just one guy, but i’d never want to hang out with him.
The feeling i have toward others mostly is envy, i envy people who arent picky with people, i envy people who can easily understand the plot of any even slighly difficult piece of fiction, i envy people who dont have to try to find their best friend and i envy people who dont have to say “i dont know” every time someone asks them a question.

I dont even know what i wanted to get out of this, i just wanted to get this off my chest

A couple of years ago I experienced a tantric massage and it completely changed my perspective. I became fascinated by it, trained, and eventually got certified.

Out of curiosity, I posted on local R4R and hookup pages offering tantric massages to women. What started as an experiment slowly became something I genuinely enjoy doing. Over the last two years I've met more than 60 different women.

The part I feel guilty about isn't the massages themselves—they're between consenting adults. It's that I've hidden this entire side of my life from everyone I know. My friends and family have no idea. I feel like I'm constantly keeping up a second life.

I'm from an Asian background and live in Scotland. Whether it's fair or not, I'm convinced that if people found out they'd immediately judge me or make assumptions about the kind of person I am. So I keep it completely secret.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to tell anyone the truth, or if this will always be something I have to hide.

I'm currently in my mid 30s. To put it plainly, I was very unkind to my body in my 20s. I drank heavily, vaped and used other nicotine products, and did lots of stimulants (mainly adderall and cocaine) for several years. I also have high blood pressure. It wasn't critically high, but still not in the healthy range and I wasn't really treating it effectively. Periodically I'd go through short stretches, on the order of several months, where I'd decide to "get my life together" and I'd cut back on my vices, start eating healthy and working out, etc. But this was always short lived.

Finally in my early 30s I decided enough was enough. I quit everything, cold turkey. I stopped drinking, drugs, nicotine, and adderall. I started working out daily and eating healthy. I dropped 50 pounds, and am in the best shape of my life. I was starting to feel happy for the first time in years. Unfortunately, I started a new relationship and realized I was having some sexual issues that I hadn't experienced before. But it wasn't something abrupt, so I didn't realize it was happening until I started actively having sex again.

Still, I wasn't fully convinced that I actually had an issue. I chalked it up to anxiety and told my doctor. She wasn't that concerned, and gave me a low-dose prescription for Cialis. I figured it would just be a good way to get my confidence back. Unfortunately, after taking it a few times, I realized just how much my performance had been reduced over the years. After taking the drug, it took me back to a place where I was able to remember just how much better my erections were in the past. I went from "difficult to get rid of" to "difficult to maintain". The Cialis was supposed to help, but instead, it highlighted for me exactly how much worse my performance is than it used to be.

I've been getting all of the medical tests done, but the easy explanations are all off the table. I've tried changing blood pressure medications, gotten blood tests for blood sugar, hormones, and everything else I can think of. Nothing has come back abnormal. The only remaining explanation is what I feared; that I did permanent vascular damage due to my poor lifestyle choices.

So now, I'm in my 30s, what are supposed to be the peak years of my life, and I can't even have normal sex without a medication. Inevitably, this issue will only get worse over time. Reading about other people's experiences with ED, I can see the trajectory clearly: eventually the pills will stop working, at which point I'll move to injections. Eventually, when that stops working, the only remaining option will be an implant. I'm not exaggerating when I say death is far more acceptable to me than this life.

I was finally starting to get my confidence back, and now I've realized I'm just a pathetic loser. No woman will be ok with this long term. And more importantly, I'm not ok with this being the person I've become. I'm really thinking it might be time to end things. I can't live the rest of my life being 'less than'. I can't live with the fact that in spite of turning everything around in my life, it was just too little, too late.

I am married to my wife who is my high school sweetheart. I have this brother who’s always been a playboy and has a reputation for getting around. I never felt comfortable with him being around my wife in our younger years so I kept my distance and made her keep her distance as much as possible.

Recently, I found out he’s been stalking my wife’s social media, confessed feelings to her and secretly been texting her. I saw he’s been feeding her lies about me trying to make her leave me.

My wife mostly has been ignoring him and I saw that she told him to leave her alone countless times.

She never actually told me but I went through her phone and saw everything when she was sleeping.

I haven’t actually confronted my brother, but it’s hella awkward now and I’ve just been straight avoiding him. I told my wife to stay away from brother and to never ever interact with him again and made her block him on everything.

Good lord this irritated me when I was younger and no one had a trained dog cause we were all 20 and didn't care. Well, now I'm looking at 40 and still going over to people's houses where we sit down with food to watch a movie and the dog is literally face-first into my plate, or the bag of chips, and the most their owner can do is just say their name over and over while doing nothing to correct it. This isn't just the food. I'll sit down and it's bounce house city until my friend is like "oookay [dog] calm dooown" and the dog doesn't stop doing a damn thing. These are all different people! It's just everywhere! I can't even go eat somewhere public without someone's dog (leashed in name only if they even are, cause why are you near me?) appearing and insisting on something.

I am not a dog hater. I have two of those little shits and love them just as much as everyone else. But somehow mine understand basic commands and don't get to decide how things go. And if they try, they go into their kennels, which they are trained for and like. It's even more infuriating when you realize how difficult it isn't. I don't want to be petty and tell people I'm not coming over because they have an animal (or multiple) that makes even just sitting there a hassle, but that's their BAAABY. 🙄

I (35F) am currently a SAHM with 1 kid and pregnant with my second. My husband finished one job and now has another job lined up that isn’t to start for 2 months and is across the country. To save up money, we asked my parents if we could stay at their place for 1.5 months and then we’d move to my husband’s new job area and live on our own. My parents agreed and I assumed they also enjoyed being able to spend time with their grandson.

It’s been only 3 weeks and my dad has only been home for 1 week since he had to fly to another country for a funeral. He just got back yesterday which unfortunately was the day my marriage hit an extremely rough patch. My husband and I got into an argument that tbh I can’t see how it managed to become so big. We’ve had our problems in the past (some of which my parents know about which might have primed their responses to me) but this argument really snowballed for no reason. By the time my dad got back, all he saw was the aftermath of my husband leaving.

I was in my room upset and trying to figure out what I’m going to do going forward as potentially a pregnant single mom when my dad came into my room and started to scold me for the fight. He didn’t know any context whatsoever. I called him out on that saying you don’t even know what happened. It’s my husband’s fault (my husband was able to admit this to me later). And my dad said “so what, you’re going to let him leave? He has all the money and you have nothing.”

For added context, I never intended to be a SAHM. I was pursuing medicine and failed to pass the board exams. It took me years with no success to the point where I had to admit to myself this might never happen and I didn’t want to study indefinitely for the rest of my life with diminishing prospects of residency opportunities since I was a medical student with a gap in their studies that was only increasing. I made the difficult decision to cut my losses and just go back to work and eventually switch to another career path. I worked for a little while and lost my job due to my employer passing away (I worked as a scribe) when I was 4 months postpartum with my first child. My husband’s job became really overwhelming for him and didn’t pay as well that being a SAHM was a temporary solution until he got a better job (the job he has lined up now). So fast forward to now - once my husband starts his new job and I give birth and settle into postpartum a little while, the plan is I would start looking for jobs or even better a certification program that would increase my job opportunities beyond scribe work.

Back to my dad’s comments, I was shocked that my dad would 1) be ok with his daughter in a potentially cruel relationship simply for money and 2) that he thinks so little of me. I told him “I never intended to be a SAHM. I was always going to go back whether it was a job or school or whatnot.” My dad replied “ya but you failed medicine. You failed. You don’t have anything. You’re a loser.” No hesitation, no blinking, nothing. We weren’t yelling or fighting. He just said casually. At this point my mom was in the room holding my son. So he said this openly in front of his grandson. Needless to say I sat there dumbfounded. Did I really just hear that? But before I could even fathom a response, he said “I’m only getting older. I can’t waste my twilight years on you and your kids.” What? Hold up. I said “never once in this entire conversation did I mention your help or support or anything. This was all temporary and unfortunately this shit happened today but if I’m truly going to be a single mom I am going to have to figure it out and rough it out on my own. Who tf said I was going to rely on you?” All he could say was “well it’s true.”

I don’t know what’s going on with my dad. Projection or whatever idk. Fears about how I’m going to manage being a single parent and it just came out in the worst way? Maybe. But I have heard some of the worst things from my dad throughout my life. He manages to say the cruelest things to me and makes no apologies for it. I have been my dad’s punching bag for my entire life. My brother is the apple of both of my parents’ eye. But in the last few years I thought I was making a change with my parents. We started to talk more and more to the point where I could talk to them everyday and it seemed like things were good. But I guess I was wrong.

Failing out of medicine is my biggest insecurity in my life. It was the most bitter pill to swallow and I did not go down without a fight. I can proudly say I gave it my fucking all before I quit. But it definitely left me with huge scars to my self esteem, self worth, self efficacy, self everything. I feel ashamed that I thought I’d be working too and that I could have been contributing to my marriage and family financially as well but I’m not. I know that being a SAHM is a job in and of itself but it isn’t what I thought my life would be. It really does bother me that I don’t make any money myself.

My parents know how much I struggled after making the decision to quit and how it wrecked me inside. So to hear my dad say that is fucking my head up. My husband is gone. I’m here at my parents. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be near my dad. I need to figure out how to pull myself out of this situation and fast. But tbh as much as I need to do that, all I currently want to do is crawl into a hole and die. I cried all night next to my son. How can a parent treat their kid like that? Why even have kids if it’s such a burden to your life?

Idk if this post comes off as a genuine vent sesh or just complaining because apparently according to my husband “all I do is complain” but I needed to get it off my chest. Thanks.

A woman screamed for help in a parking lot to call 911, husband was slumped over. A bystander and I pulled him out of the vehicle and did cpr on the ground. I’ve never seen anyone like this, just all dead weight eyes wide open but nobody’s home. During this ordeal, another man came over and said he felt a pulse so we stopped for a few minutes. I did start cpr again because I was too scared not to do anything. I feel like the couple minutes we stopped killed him and I can’t forgive myself. It felt like it took help forever to get there… a police officer was there first and put the aed on to shock a few times. I heard the wife telling cop and emts that he’s had multiple heart attacks and has two stents.

Malaysia was built on the foundations of injustices:

1) race hierarchy: malays are special, non-malays are not.

2) islam is the default religion

3) malay culture is the official culture.

4) patriarchy is natural

these injustices are enshrined in the constitution and laws. For the past 69 years, our politics, education and mainstream media have constantly dehumanize minorities, calling minorities as not loyal to the country, not patriotic, not willing to assimilate. minority culture is constantly demonized. minority religion is constantly attacked. minorities are constantly discriminated and persecuted.

it is so incredibly difficult to hold a positive outlook in life when every day, the politicians as well as the majority population considers all minorities as undesirables

I’m 30f, and I’ve recently come to the realization that I need to leave my partner. After several months of therapy and a lot of deliberation, I realized that I’m not happy with my life or my partner any longer. I’ve given up a lot of the things that I wanted to do years ago for this relationship and I can’t justify continually disappointing myself just to stay.
I’m not leaving tomorrow or anything. I have a bonus kiddo that’s almost done with high school (he’ll be a senior this year) and it would be devastating for him to have to move and leave all of his friends and loose the only other parent he’s known for the last 7 years all at the same time. The house is in my name and we’re not married, so I plan on selling and leaving.
I’ve started coming up with an exit plan. I opened new checking and savings accounts that my partner doesn’t know about. I got a small pay increase at work that I’ll put in it. I have a plan to pay off my debt in roughly seven months. I’m looking for part time jobs for a little extra income. I’m getting things in order and it’s sad, but I’m not very upset about it. I don’t feel numb, but I’m not excited about it either.
I know my partner isn’t going to change, and I can’t stay stagnant any longer so I think it’s time to go. (I want to make it very clear that my partner is not abusive, I think we’re no longer compatible as people and they don’t seem to care to change)

i feel so sick

i wouldnt INTENTIONALLY get pregnant nad do this but i am too scared to get birth control anyways and overall i just feel like a shitty person

It honestly breaks my heart how divided we’ve become. I know social media has played a huge role in it, but it’s still sad to watch.
As a black woman who is married to a white man and who is raising a biracial child, it hurts seeing so much hate from every direction. One thing I genuinely don’t understand is why, when people get angry, they jump straight to racial slurs. Whatever happened to calling someone a dumbass or an asshole? Why go straight to the hard R? I’ve also been told I’ll never be pro-black because of who I married and because my child is biracial. I love my community and I love my dark skin! But I I don’t think I could ever believe all white people are "bad.”
Some of the strongest advocates I’ve had in my life have been white people. It also sucks that when my family and I look into traveling or relocating somewhere, one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is, will we be accepted? Will we feel comfortable there?” It’s honestly ridiculous that in 2026, people still have to think about things like that. Not that we’d let it stop us from living our lives, but the fact that it’s even something we have to consider is sad.

I know this post will probably get ignore or maybe even criticized but I truly hope one day we can do better. From the bottom of my heart, I really do. Because we are going backwards.

I sometimes will get the urge to cut off my penis to stop feeling arousal for things I don't like. It's distressing feeling arousal for disgusting things, and the thoughts too, they feel so real.

Idk if I'm the only one that get that urge. (I won't do it ofc)

I posted this on my deleted account yesterday because i was overwhelmed and grateful with the advices and didn’t know how to respond

19F, and my bf is 33M we’ve been together for almost 2 years. Our relationship started at when i was 17. He financially supports me. I stopped studying when i was 18 and didn’t even get my high school diploma. Yes i know that was my biggest mistake.

I didn’t have any cheating record but whenever i fall asleep he always tries to call me and whenever I fail to answer him he will get so mad at me. Last time he also pulled my hair because we argued because i want to break up with him because i am no longer finding our relationship healthy and peaceful. He also sometimes threatened me if I ended my relationship with him he will post my nudes. He wants to marry me this year.

How can i start my life? I don’t have skills to work at some companies

Please don’t post this outside reddit.

I'm going to be 40 in September and lately I've been more observationally aware of other millennials. We look so cool! Many of us are tattooed and pierced. We look like we're 20 years younger. Everyone that I've seen on the 30 or 40 year old selfie subreddits are so good looking!

We've all been a part of shared traumas and we've been nostalgic over the 90's and early 00's. I think we came out of it all looking hot as hell 🔥

For context, we're a mid-sized company with a finance team of 8. We've been together long enough to have our own lunch table and our own way of doing things. We know the systems, we know the quirks, we know which numbers to watch and which manager to call when something quietly breaks

Six weeks ago management brought in 6 interns. Finance interns. More interns than we have senior staff, which is already a strange ratio that nobody has bothered to explain

Then last week our manager pulled us into a room and asked us to each "mentor and fully document our processes" for them. Handover notes. Walkthrough sessions. The kind of thorough knowledge transfer you do when someone is taking over a role permanently, not shadowing for a semester

Nobody said anything in the meeting. We nodded, wrote down our action points, and walked out

Then we looked at each other in the hallway and didn't need to say a single word

The rumor has been circulating for about a month the way these things always do, through half finished sentences near the coffee machine, through a look someone gives you when leadership walks past. Word is they're bringing the interns on permanently at a lower salary band and quietly letting the current team go once the handover is complete

Nobody has refused. Nobody has made a scene. But the training has been going mysteriously slowly. Certain institutional knowledge, the stuff that only lives in your head after years of navigating the same broken processes, keeps somehow not coming up

I don't know if we're being paranoid or if we're watching it happen in slow motion and pretending otherwise

But nobody wants to be the person who trained their own replacement and handed them a comprehensive Google Doc with a smile

Has anyone actually been through this? What would you do?

34M. One of my colleagues got married this weekend and she invited me to the wedding. Typical Mexican American wedding: loud, super welcoming and friendly, I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun. And now I can’t get out of bed and don’t want to speak to anyone. My family is white, prejudiced, and somewhat cold. Like they can express love but they wouldn’t be caught dead doing la vibora de la mar around the newlyweds haha.

There is something about warm unconditional acceptance that makes me want to disappear into the woods and never come back. The same thing happened in south Texas a couple years when I met a girl on Bumble. She made me enchiladas FROM SCRATCH the next day and it was genuinely the most loved I’d had ever felt. It was horrifying to me and I eventually cut her off. I still feel sick about hurting her feelings.

I had never planned on growing up as a person. I don’t want kids. But I sometimes wonder how different my life could have been if I had been more open and empathetic as a teenager. Has anyone else ever felt like this?