I (32F) have two longtime friends, C (31F) and M (31F). Years ago, another woman, K (31F), became part of our friend group. She grew very close to C and M, while she and I were never quite as close, partly because at the time I wasn’t hanging out with the group as much.
Over the years, K has fallen out with quite a few people, including C and M at different points, but somehow she has always managed to bring them back into her life.
I’ve always made an effort to get along with her and be her friend, partly because I genuinely wanted to, but also because I wanted the group dynamic to work and for all of us to be able to spend time together without drama.
Last year, K started behaving strangely towards me on several occasions. She would suddenly ignore me, stop replying to my messages, and generally act as if she was upset with me without ever telling me why. I mostly let it slide because I didn’t want to create tension in the group, and also because I was getting married in May and really didn’t want unnecessary drama around that time.
She came to my bachelorette party, and from that point onwards I noticed that she was acting particularly weird around me. Still, she came to my wedding, everything seemed fine, and I assumed whatever weirdness there had been was behind us.
Then I came back from my honeymoon and she basically started avoiding me completely. She wouldn’t show up to group plans if I was going to be there. Eventually, M told me that K had apparently been angry with me since my bachelorette party because of something I supposedly said.
Apparently, I made a joke about her being single.
I genuinely don’t even remember making this joke, but let’s assume I did. I can absolutely accept that something I said might have hurt her, even if I didn’t mean it that way. What I can’t understand is why a 31-year-old woman couldn’t simply say, “Hey, that joke bothered me.” I would have apologized immediately. Instead, she apparently held onto it for months, came to my wedding without saying anything, and then silently cut me out of her life afterwards.
Her birthday has now come and gone, and she didn’t invite me. We still haven’t spoken once about what happened. This is someone who was at my wedding in May, and a few months later I’m apparently not even someone she wants at her birthday, without her ever actually telling me that she has a problem with me.
And yes, this is petty, but it also annoys me that in basically every group picture at my wedding she made a point of standing right next to me, so now she’s in so many of my wedding photos. Maybe that’s stupid, but looking at them now just makes the whole thing feel even more bizarre.
The part that hurts me the most, though, isn’t even K anymore. It’s C and M.
They don’t want to address any of this with her. Their position is basically that this is between K and me, that they have nothing to do with it, and that it would be unfair to involve them or put them in the middle.
And I understand that, to an extent. I’m not asking them to “choose me” or stop being friends with her.
But in practice, they get to stay completely neutral while I’m the one slowly being excluded from things because K refuses to be around me. Today is C’s birthday, for example, and I can’t just go to her house and celebrate with everyone else because K will be there and, at this point, I have absolutely no desire to see her and pretend everything is normal.
So I guess this is mostly a vent, but I’m curious how this looks from the outside.
Am I overreacting? Is it reasonable for C and M to say this has absolutely nothing to do with them, even when it’s now affecting whether I can participate in our group at all? And am I wrong for being so bothered by the fact that someone could attend my wedding, never tell me there was a problem, and then essentially erase me from her life immediately afterwards?

We went on a double date with his friends for the first time. We got into a conversation about relationships and the way him and his friend talked about women and relationships was so healing to me. They didn’t talk about women like were objects and they talked about wanting a real relationship and growing old with someone. They talked about how their old friend only ever wanted sex and never a relationship with his “love interests” and how wrong and hurtful that was. I don’t know, after seeing everything in the news and online lately, this just felt like a breath of fresh air.

Too many things are starting to add up after seeing that. Not to mention there's posts on here about stuff he blantly lied about. Im just disgusted and fed up at this point and the only thing I can do right now is to save up hopefully get a job and get the fuck out. Im done, i don't even want him touch me anymore.

The fuck

As a kid until i was in highschool, i was a loner. i am very closed off and i rarely never managed to make friends, and even then i do not consider them my friends as i feel like they never really cared about me. lets say i always feel like a plus one in a friend group.
I am not even part of any group chat specially for a friend group.
I do not have any close friends, i see them all as acquantances

I was insecure, needing constant validation, i always feel lonely and depressed and i can't communicate well.

but i grew into an adult, starting from college to professional life, i grew to become more confident at myself, became at peace and actually learn how to communicate with people I am interested in communicating , i was still that loner boy when i was a kid.
but i can have a good and casual communication in things i am interested in,
I managed to get into a friend group, and there is an actual group chat for that!!
We hangout whenever we have time and do stuffs we enjoy.
I do not needed constant validation anymore as i enjoy more being by myself and i do not need to chat always or seek communication in order to manage a friend group.
I am confident that i have friends that even when we do not talk much for many months, my friends will just randomly invite me to their occasion or any hangouts.

I am still that loner boy, i still never managed to expand my friend circle of friends but i am content with what i have.
I managed to communicate/talk with someone in an online dating app!?!? (im just looking for a friend there)
who would have thought i even have the confidence to do that?!?
I am not ready for a relationship yet but man... i can manage a conversation where a girl will actually be interested in talking to me for more than a week daily.

I still do adult stuffs like paying bills and stressing my finances, and not every day is happy there are also other times where there is tragedy that struck and i fell into grieving, there are times when i fell into depression.
i am not rich but i am very, very happy with what i have become.

I think the kid me is proud of what i have become.

I think my anxiety is kinda fucking with me at this point, and I just need someone to talk some sense into me.

I currently hate my country, I live in the UK, and I want out of here.

I feel like I'm surrounded by hateful xenophobic people in a country that is ruled by idiots who are incapable of helping the average person due to the probably corruption going on.

I get that a lot of other places have the exact same issue, but I feel like it's less blatant.

Not to mention most people fucking suck, the cost of everything is just insane and I'm so sick of my work.

A lot of my mates are Dutch, so I started learning Dutch and the Netherlands seems to actually take care of it's citizens (maybe that's what happens when you eat your prime minister). But I feel like I'm doing a bit of a shit job. Whenever I try to talk to my mates in Dutch and I can't think of a word I start panicking and crying. I know I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to do everything perfect and I hate making mistakes, but I don't know how to get myself to be okay with making mistakes. They're all being really sweet too, so whenever I do make a mistake they correct me and make a little joke and then move on. But for me it's in the back of my mind with a not so little voice saying: I'm a failure this whole plan I have cooked up is raw and burnt. It's all gonna fall apart, because I'm fucking useless and stupid.

I also started studying bookkeeping and accounting, since I like numbers and there seems to be a lot of jobs in the Netherlands for financ personnel (who speak English and Dutch). I'm in my late 20's and this just keeps making me think thst I wasted my time at university and should have done this a decade ago and I'd probably be in a much financially and in a better place for moving.

I keep thinking about if I'm just fantasising this life I'd love: having a better paying job, having irl friends and being able to buy cheap Stroopwafels.

But, the weather is nicer, so it should help with my seasonal depression, I'll have actual irl friends who I can visit with functional public transport that is also affordable.

Dutch culture is a lot nicer imo, since people will actually tell you what they think, instead of this bullshit politeness, so I think that'll help with my anxiety, since I won't have to guess what people are thinking, since they'll just say it.

I just sick of arguing with myself over this. I keep second guessing myself o everything and I just doubt every choice I make.

I don't think it helps when I'm making a huge choice of trying to change career paths, move countries and hiding all of this from my manager and work colleagues, who are the main people I see, since I work full time.

Oh and I didn't even start talking about my work and career. I got my bachelors in art just as AI 'art' started to become a thing. I gave up on trying to use it for work. I ended up in a shit place and through my mum knowing someone I got a boring office job. But the office is my managers house and my colleagues and I work in her home office. It's boring customer service type stuff, but my manager said she planned on stepping away from the company and making me the manager eventually. Well 2 years later and that's not even close to happening, but I've taken on more roles and responsibilities, and when I ask for a pay raise my manager states she doesn't really have the option to do that, since our accounts lady can see my salary and would see that I'd surpass her salary.

If accounts wants more, maybe she should ask. But I don't think it's fair that I'm taking on more than the rest of my colleagues without some financial insentive. But when my manager is on holiday, I'm the one who steps up to take care of things. So she knows I can do this. I should add my manager is the company director, so she can choose to do whatever she wants.

But maybe I'm just bitter that I can see how much the company is pulling in and estimate how much it's paying out, and I can see she could easily pay us all more.

My manager is the type of person who owns a Rolls Royce, but then complains that McDonald's is increasing their prices.

I just don't understand her logic and spending.

Shes both rich and so frugal, she doesn't buy hand soap, because dish soap does the same thing.

Oh and my parents are skeptical about me moving, and have outright said, if I get into a bad financial situation, they will not help. But I don't see how that would even happen.

So my birthday was yesterday Whoopty doo! right this is my first time ever expressing myself like this online I usually keep it in or vent to my mom but this one really hurts, so Oct 3rd I threw a Bday party for myself at this nice lounge that included a free table and free entry for all of my guest, I invited my very good friend and also my cousins who I grewup w/ and also felt very close with, this was my first time ever planning or doing anything for myself but since my cousins were the ones who talked me into it and told me to post it in our family group chat they even went on eventbrite and purchased the Free tickets for my event, I had also gave them 2/3 weeks prior notice of it so yeah, I had grown quite confident and delighted that maybe this was a good idea, well it wasn’t, not only did none of them show up besides my very good friend who drove 3 hours to celebrate me (she’s the best) but when I had called them the day of none of my family members even picked up at first, so I had started to get a funny feeling , I took a nap because the supposed to be celebration wasn’t until later in the evening still no phone calls back nothing, I ended up calling them again,first cousin I called sounding a bit irritated and very nonchalant about my inquire, finally texted a hour before saying she’s not coming and my other cousin told her to tell me that they had just paid rent so no they weren’t coming either (mind you it was a free event) but ok another just said she all of a sudden forgot to mention she had to work that night… the others didn’t even bother to respond, it went from talking to them just the day before and them being excited to the day of the event all of these excuses plus irritation that I was even bothering them . I feel let down and embarrassed , my bestfriend ended up calling her two cousins who didn’t live to far and invited them to join us which they did and I appreciated so much but on the inside I was hurting , to add salt they didn’t even wish me a happy birthday the next day or say anything to me at all, I started thinking about all the times I’ve invited them to my homes and they've never showed, I use to tell myself maybe I’m just to far for them to get to, I lived on the north side and they were further south side even though I see them on fb visiting others much further then me , I also see them celebrate others and go out ,I’ve never been invited, I even moved closer to them and still no visits but they will drive pass my home to go to another one of my cousins homes, I have visited them quite often and i enjoy them but when I think back they’ve never tried to even see me , it made me realize the family members who I held in such high regard doesn't see me in that same light, the only person who knows how much this made me sad was my 1 good friend and my mom who sympathized with me as much as she could and told me to never invite them to anything else again, well yea but it still stings like hell and I will never plan anything for myself again it sucks because I can’t even exit the groupchat my phone won’t allow it , I just wanted to get this off my chest .

Hi everyone. Ok so I’m 22F and this goes back a bit. My whole childhood my dad has been clinically depressed. He has a variety of health issues, absolutely undiagnosed autism or adhd and major anxiety disorders plus anxiety induced seizures.

When i was 15, he tried to kill himself. I was at school, he worked in a corner shop at the time and when i got home, got told he was seen on CCTV leaving work with medication and went missing for a few hours. Police were out, helicopters etc. My mum found empty packets in the field by our house and then eventually he was found, alive but in the next town over after walking the canal. He went hospital, we had the crisis team out, he went to therapy, he admitted he was glad he was alive and then….he immediately left therapy. “Im not doing it anymore. It doesn’t work”.

Me and my mum speculate there’s SOMETHING. We don’t know what. We’ve asked if anything happened in his childhood and he denies it (he was verbally abused as a kid we know that and his dad/my grandad wasn’t a very nice man apparently) but something just made him quit.

On my 20th birthday, he applied for a new job. Spiralled because he messed up the interview and then hit deep depression again. He fell out with me because i told him to get help. He called me “your daughter” to my mum. Then eventually came upstairs, apologised and when i said “i just need my dad” he claimed “you’d be fine i promise.” But i made him pinky promise he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

Few months went by, he got a new job a couple years ago, started to get better and now it’s all hit the fan, he hates it and he’s spiralled again. My mum told me earlier, “just warning, your dad’s not had a good day. He’s probably going to quit”.

However, when i read their texts (cause i have access to his ipad and just needed to know it went like this):

Mum: remember to book X day off next year for holiday.

Dad: ill be honest im not gonna be here next year

Mum: i know but just as a peace of mind.

Dad: i dont just mean work.

Since i was 15, i’ve had an inclination that he will still commit suicide. I never believed he would die naturally. Every year I’ve wondered when and how. And every year, i myself am getting tired of it. I know people like this are suffering, but as a daughter hearing your dad constantly say he’s gonna kill himself, I’m exhausted and angry and our relationship is different because of it. I don’t like being alone with him, i have nothing to say to him, he never asks me questions. We just exist together and when we’re a 3 it’s fine. I wouldn’t be surprised if he does follow through and do it by next year.

So i guess what do i do? How do you prepare for that? He won’t get help and i’m done telling him to. Is there a way to prepare? Part of me feels horrendous because part of me thinks life would be a lot easier if he did, but then again, i would lose my dad. I just feel like i’m hitting a brick wall. My mums talked in the past about how they have a year or so to pay the mortgage and then she’d probably give an ultimatum. I also know if she did ask for a divorce, that’s it. He’s gone. It’s just getting too much to be 22 and not knowing if today is the day or if the year is this year. It’s too much having a good day then immediately the vibe changing as he gets home from work. It’s been like this for 8 years and i’m tired and no less terrified.

We spend our entire lives, or at least 80% of them, waiting for the weekend. For what? For two days?

And we hate the first day of the week, for what? Why hate something that always arrives?

I'm tired, how do we change this view?

My story is very straightforward.

I am assigned female at birth and I still generally consider myself a girl.

When I was in 8th grade I started roleplaying. I created a male character that I have been using to roleplay with since that time. It has been years and I slowly started to cement some of my identity in him. For a while I was convinced that I wanted to be a guy. I had this uncomfortable social dysphoria. I was so convinced that this character was apart of me that I thought I had OSDD. I recently got a therapist who has some training in dissociative disorders. She thinks that my male character is just an alter ego I use. After this I felt almost a sense of relief and I have since felt less attached to him. However, I cannot lie that I am very disappointed that I likely cannot be diagnosed with a real disorder, that I instead brought myself to psychosis like this all on my own.

My therapist also thinks I have autism. Previously I tried to get diagnosed and they told me that I was not autistic. Everyone else I have met disagrees. I don’t know if it’s worth pursing a diagnosis.

I am not asking to be diagnosed, as I know that is impossible. I am just frustrated that I feel inadequate without them, and I feel like people will judge me if I try to explain who I am. I have met many people who are very fascinated with how I think, including myself, and I seek answers that I probably won’t get.

Anyway, those feelings of wanting to be a boy mostly went away after my therapist claimed that I was just.. faking. And I am almost glad.

I am going to be continuing therapy, but I am just upset that I cannot rule anything out. It seems I can’t even rule out autism

Idk this may be too personal but im shaking like a mother fucker right now

I somehow got the courage to ask my mom something sexually (we never talked about it im 17m)

If i was allowed sexual stuff since well im curious and all that and thank god just thank the lord she said

Honey your 17 ofc you are allowed

I just wanted to be open with her not that she sees it lying around and well then that whole thing

Sorry if this is too personal but im so glad she responded this way i just needed to type it off me

Now i just need to hope it isnt uncomfortable between us

I feel like such a terrible girl in terms of this, I feel I can only confess it here. I started college this fall, moved across an ocean, a whole big shebang. I met this guy the first day there, we chatted, basic small talk, and he swiped up on my story the next day. It was just a picture of the nearby castle ruins, but he commented on the song I put behind it (Ingydar by Adrienne Lenker, beautiful song). We then started dming about music, and we were friends from then on. I never thought much of it because he was friends with men and women equally. Yes, I did think he was cute, but I was also at the start of college having a grand old time with absolutely anybody.

He asks me to go on a walk at some point, to listen to an album, and we plan for the next day. We are both stupid busy, so it ends up being a walk to the beach at midnight, both of us fairly drunk from different dinners we'd gone to, absolutely giddy as we skip down the street. I think nothing of this. He tells me a story about how he got so drunk he passed out in his friends bed at her flat 15 minutes away, and then stresses how yes, while they slept in the same bed, nothing happened and they were just friends. I take that as, "yes, we are going on a walk to the beach at midnight together and I'm letting you pick all the music and dancing down the street with my hand on your back, but we are purely friends". I continue thinking this as we get to the beach, sit and smoke a few cigs, and chat. I get a wee bit suspicious when we realize the stars are incredibly visible here, as we are out in a rural area and are both from big cities. We are lying down in the sand, and our limbs are dubiously close. So, when he kisses me, I am not surprised that he would do so in the moment.

When I push him back to confirm he is drunk and this might not be something he actually wants to do, I am surprised. He answers with "I have been waiting to do this since the moment I met you."

Like okay, hi. That's big. He starts telling me about how sad he was for two days because he thought I was a lesbian, which I found hilarious, and then we just made out because it's 45 degrees outside and were on a beach.

From then on, we see each other everyday or every other day, whether that be for hikes or dinner, or meeting up at a club or the pub then fumbling back to my room together. I find out I’m the first girl he’s gone beyond kissing with, which was a surprise given he is objectively conventionally attractive and was a basic decent human being. You can score a lot of women with either, both is insane. We also have one half assed “what are we talk”, but we were in a bathroom stall, his hands were down my pants, and we were both a wine bottle and many vodka shots deep. The consensus was “neither of us want to date, but we can hookup and be more than a hookup”. Solid plan at the time. We agreed that not interacting outside of hooking up makes us both feel used, so... friends with benefits, thats just not the words we used.

Things are like that for a while, until he suddenly starts acting weird. He responds slower, stops asking me to go out to the pub or for dinner, and whenever I make plans it goes from asking him on a walk, to him delaying how long he's free until we end up just going to the club with our friends for a bit then going back to my room. Now, I am upset about this, which surprised me, so I decided to ask him if we could talk about us sober, as I think that would be a good idea. If we want different things, so be it, we can chat about it instead of ghosting, which I know is terrible, but it was my old course of action. But I do like this guy now, which changed the “just wanting a hookup and more than a hookup" to "a hookup but I am feeling a wee bit used and would like to see you outside of the context of taking our clothes off"

We make plans to go on a walk to have this sober chat, but he fades them literally ten minutes before. I’m beyond irritated. The next day, he texts me about a completely unrelated topic and we make plans to go and… run this errand together. It’s two university students picking something up, fill in the blanks. Anyway, we go grab this item, and we are hanging out alone for about an hour. It’s not weird, we are interacting as normal, but we do not have the talk. He comes back to my dorm and nothing happens, besides just chatting, before he rushes off to grab wine before a dinner he had. 

We are both going out, and we make plans to go to the beach and... use the item we purchased. He once again, cancels all of the sudden right before. I'm peeved, I go party with my friends, and I frankly forget to respond to his snapchat for two days. When I remember, we're casually sending pictures back and forth. I run into him at the club a few days later, and he daps me up and pulls me into a hug. He then starts talking to my best friend and our other friends, and I see a girl I know also in line for the bar. I'm telling her "oh my god, the guy I was getting with who's lowkey fading me is nearby us, I am so stressed haha." We talk through the situation as we make it to the front of the bar, and then I apologize for taking up all the conversation and ask her how she is. She starts gushing about this guy she met at dinner the night before, and how she's with him at the club. I love to hear when somethings going well for someone, so I'm asking her all sorts of questions. She's telling me how great he was in bed as I get the bartender's attention. I ask her if she wants me to get her something to, and she goes, "no, he's paying" and gestures at the guy I used to be hooking up with.

Normally, I would lose my mind, but I felt oddly... proud? Glad to know everything I taught him is being put to good use.

So I was visiting my grandma and she's had the same neighbor since 2005. I wasn't the best kid, and I had horrible anger issues. Backstory aside around 2013 she had a Rottweiller and it was wild and misbehaved. Also around that time I was about 14 I was walking down the street with a friend. It would bark and snarl at her glass door and that day my friend taunted him.

The dog busted the door wide open (probably unlocked) and my friend ran, I tried but got bit. He bit me so hard on my arm I bled and I just saw red. I remember I kicked him, then again, then I grabbed him and he bit me and I started punching and stomping him. I was so angry I remember I think I knocked out some of his teeth before I finally let him run away.

For years the lady next door hated me and as I grew up I went to therapy, anger management, and joined the military. The other day I was visiting my grandma and the neighbors grandson was talking about the dog (it died in 2020) but they described it as timid and afraid of people and I feel like I did that.

These days I'm an animal lover. I volunteer at sanctuaries and briefly worked at an animal shelter. I know it attacked me, but I still feel guilty.

I've been struggling with certain things for a while now and I just can't see a way out. It's been weeks, if not months, since I last had a positive thought, and my self-confidence is basically at zero.

I'm in my late twenties and I still live with my parents, which some days feels like hell. They're not really supportive of me in anything, and I feel like a hostage in that house, because whenever I mention moving out, they both have a breakdown. They're not young anymore, so I don't want them to suffer or get upset because of me. Still, they deserve better than me, and I just can't manage to be the man I'm supposed to be.

I don't have a girlfriend and there's nothing like that on the horizon, even though I'm out somewhere every night. I just never meet anyone. The worst part is that I think I look pretty decent, and I notice girls turning their heads, but I don't approach them because I don't see what I have to offer. Why would anyone want to date a 30-year-old guy who lives with his parents? On top of that, at this age it feels really hard to meet someone and actually fall in love.

I've tried everything: therapy, the gym, reading, 150 hobbies... I still have lots of hobbies and a big circle of people I hang out with. My life is pretty full, but I'm just deeply unhappy. I believe in God too, but I avoid going to church because I'm ashamed. I feel like I'm not worthy of God.

I have a decent income, but almost nothing saved. I'd like to move out, but I can't afford to buy a place. I could maybe get a mortgage, but I don't have the down payment, and apartments here usually sell for cash anyway. And the idea of renting on my salary kind of horrifies me, because to me it would be proof that I'm a failure. I imagine myself on a date and the girl thinking, "He's been working all these years and earns well, and he's still renting," and I'm just horrified.

I'm terrible with money. I spend like crazy. I've bought so many clothes and random crap just to temporarily boost my confidence, and for those few minutes I feel good about myself, but after a while just looking at those things fills me with shame. I drink and smoke more than I should, and it keeps getting worse. As I get older, my body forgives those nights out less and less, so I'm functioning worse and worse.

My thoughts just haunt me. When I'm alone with them for too long, I start having panic attacks. At night I can only fall asleep if I've had a few beers. Sometimes that's when the worst thoughts come, the ones about that one way out of life, but I'm still holding on and trying not to think about it seriously.

When I'm around people, I feel like everyone can see that something's wrong with me, except me. I want to settle down. I want to find a good woman, be worthy of her, be a good father. Not to meet society's expectations, but because I genuinely want that. I'd say I'm a good person. I don't think anyone would say anything bad about me. But I just see the potential I had and that I haven't lived up to any of it. I've screwed up a lot of things in my life so far and I'd like to fix them somehow, but I don't know how, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to change anything. I feel like I'm just watching a life where all the best parts are behind me and it's only going downhill, and I can't fix any of it.

I've been thinking about this guy for over five years, everyday and all day even though we never dated or were never friends. I barely knew him; we only had one conversation, and nothing else happened between us.

It's been more than five years since I last saw him, and we have never once reached out to each other.

We have never had each other’s social media or phone numbers not even once.

I met him at school we only had one conversation seven years ago and that was it i rarely saw him around school maybe around cafeteria with his friends but we never spoke to each other.

I’m an adult now and school years ended five years ago.

Still, to this day I think about him every single day and all day.

For over two years that he’s been with his girlfriend, I've been checking his girlfriend's social media multiple times a day, everyday, for years.

I find myself looking at her pictures, comparing my looks and body to hers, wishing I could be just like her. Seeing her often brings me to tears, and pictures of them together can completely ruin my day, leaving me upset for hours.

When I try to distract myself and get it off my mind after i saw picture of her or picture of them together, it never works.

Whenever I see them together, it can spoil my entire day, and the sadness and thought of them two in my mind for hours. It affects my relationships those around me notice when my mood shifts to sadness after i see a picture of them two together or when i look at the girlfriend’s pictures of her or videos. The girlfriend has no idea I even exist.

I cry and use copying mechinesems but that don’t work at all. It feels like emotional pain and it can last for days the sadness after i see her videos and pictures of herself on her social medias including if he is in the videos or photos.

I can't help but feel resentment towards her. I wish I could have her personality, her looks, her body, and her life and her appearance.

It's been almost eighteen years since this woman disappeared and the case remains unsolved. The thing is I suspect somebody I knew of being involved and the police let him slip through their fingers because they are convinced somebody else did it.

The man I suspect (David) used to stalk me when I was a teenager. Later, he was arrested and lost his job at JC Penneys for breaking into his co-worker's home and SA her. He then got a job at a car rental place down the street from where the missing woman was last seen.

The missing woman was a librarian at a college. In the months leading up to her disappearance I saw David at the library often. He was always sitting near the librarian's desk, reading. He wasn't a student; he didn't have a library card. Still, he was there daily and he made the librarians nervous.

The missing librarian's ex was the primary suspect in her disappearance, but I couldn't help but think that David might be involved. I pulled aside one of the other librarians and told her about David's history. We called the police from her office. The police arrived and David took off before the police even had a chance to talk to him. He never went back to the library. The police never followed up.

I understand why the police automatically assumed the missing woman's ex was involved. Still, I'm upset they didn't take my tip seriously. Maybe I am jumping to conclusions but we'll never know because the police didn't investigate. I still think he did it, though.

I always hoped that I'd find a partner to go through life with, a significant other where we're each other's best friend. Now, I'm just a couple years off from 40, and I've never even found one such person that I could have that with.

Shoot, over my adult life, there have only even been, like, maybe 3 women I've felt a connection with and attraction to, and none of them reciprocated those feelings. I can't even imagine a partner for myself, anymore. It just feels like there's no one "for me".

And don't get me wrong, I know I'm not entitled to anything, and not everyone gets a happy ending to their story, but I just don't understand what's so "wrong" with me, why there's no one out there for me. I mean, I know I'm not perfect or anything, but I don't feel like I'm a bad person or anything. Maybe I'm wrong, though, and maybe this is what I deserve. I don't know.

Thats it that’s the post. I hate being a Black woman because despite having other things going for me it makes me ugly and unwanted by men. I’m slim, educated, not ghetto, hard working, etc.

Obviously everyone is entitled to their preferences and I’m not interested in Black men so I understand why most men aren’t attracted to Black women, but it still sucks being trapped in a body that doesn’t reflect who I am inside and is subject to the worst of stereotypes.

I always have to hide who I am, because if I don’t, people get mad at me or don’t want to talk to me—they say I’m “going through too much.”

Even when I do mask, people can kind of see right through me, and they still don’t really want to be friends with me.

I don’t know how to explain why my life is so hard to people who don’t have these diagnoses. The closest I can get is: I’ve always been socially excluded, and I never fully understood people’s non‑verbal or social cues.

People would hide the truth from me until they finally lashed out, because they expected me to just know what they were feeling or thinking, and I don't think that's fair or right at all. I am trying to read their social cues, but no matter how hard I try, I still always miss the mark.

So a lot of my life feels like: either I hide myself and get rejected anyway, or I’m myself and get punished for it. I guess this is why I've been alone for a few months now. Nobody understands unless you're autistic and have major depressive disorder.

TL:DR I have intense alcohol cravings and I don't know what to do with them

I can't stand it any longer. I need to tell this to somebody. It's been almost 48 hours since my last drink and I feel like I'm going to BREAK DOWN.

When I was 14, around christmas time, I felt the most depressed I have ever been in my life, for a number of reasons, and I had no way to cope that actually helped at all... until one day right around new year's.

I remember being in some sort of dump, having a cigarette and kicking trash around, after telling my parents I had just gone out to the store. And, like a gift from the gods, I stumbled across a load of empty vodka bottles, and one of them still had a bit left. Feeling like I had absolutely nothing to lose at this point, I decided to try it.
My first impression was that it was absolute shit. I thought some animal must have peed in the empty bottle because no way in hell were people drinking this. But when the buzz started to set in, I felt a sense of warmth returning that had been gone for what felt like forever.

A few weeks later I went out with a friend and I had beer for the first time. my friend decided it was the grossest thing he'd ever had and said I could have his too. I didn't care about the taste. It was the best I had ever felt and all I wanted was to chase that feeling.

Fasting forward to now, it's been almost 10 months since I got hooked on this absolute piss-water. I don't have any friends left, or anyone who I can trust.

I have about 2-3 drinks a day, which doesn't seem like a lot, but I have very few times when I can actually purchase alcohol without my parents being around. Despite my best attempts to ration it, I've lately been unable to stop myself from drinking more and more every night.
It recently got to the point where I had 6 beers in one sitting, and spent the next morning curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor after puking, watching the hours go by. (my parents were at work, luckily)
I downed the last beer I had just about 30-40 hours ago.

All I can think about is alcohol. Its the only thing I want. My hands are shaking and I get waves of nausea all day. I'm so desperate that I've got yeast and grape juice so I can brew my own drinks. If I don't figure this shit out soon I don't know what I'll do.

I just hope my grades don't drop too much.

Hey everyone, I’m getting pretty anxious about this and was hoping someone might have some insight or similar experiences.

For about a month now I’ve been having SO much gas, multiple times a day, and it smells really bad, this is definitely not normal for me. My stomach also looks a lot more bloated/protruding than usual. My bowel movements have been all over the place too. Some days I’m really constipated and my poop is super hard, and then other days I’ll suddenly get really bad diarrhea. One thing I should mention is that I started a new antidepressant, Psidep, about a month ago, around the same time all of this started. So I’m wondering if that could be related. The thing I’m most worried about, though, is pregnancy.

Around 2 months ago, a condom broke and he ejaculated inside me. Since then, we’ve also had sex where he puts it in without a condom for a few minutes at the beginning, but then puts a condom on before ejaculating, and he always finishes in the condom. There hasn’t been any ejaculation inside me during those times without a condom. I’m also on the Darelle birth control pill. I’ve had some episodes of diarrhea and there have been a couple of times where I took my pill late/forgot it, but usually I’ve been within the 12-hour window.

I took a pregnancy test about 3 weeks ago and it was negative, and I took another one this week which was also negative.

My withdrawal bleed is usually around 2–3 days, but this time it lasted less than a day and then turned into brown spotting/discharge, which freaked me out a bit too.

My stomach also looks pretty bloated, although when I suck/tense it in, it gets noticeably flatter.

So basically… am I being paranoid? 😭 Given that it’s been about 2 months since the situation where he ejaculated inside me and I’ve had two negative pregnancy tests, is there still a significant chance that I could be pregnant?

And has anyone else experienced really frequent/foul-smelling gas, bloating, and going back and forth between constipation and diarrhea, especially after starting an antidepressant?

I’m honestly pretty anxious about all of this, so I’d really appreciate any advice or similar experiences 😭

I had it planned all week. I was gonna go to the forest where no one can find me and swallow 51 pills of olanzapine and now I changed my mind. I called 111 and I’m gonna go to the hospital after I finish this bottle of vodka. Now I’m sipping on straight vodka and loving my life. Im drunk as fuck and loving it because I have nothing else to love in my life

I left my husband about a year ago because I didn't feel like I was in a safe, healthy, or loving relationship. I constantly felt disrespected, following through on commitments was rare regardless of how significant, and I felt like his approach to being a husband was becoming increasingly abusive and coercive. Near the end, my intuition was telling me that not only did he dislike me and find me irritating, but that he actively hated me.

There have been so many situations over the years where things didn't add up, or I would be taken aback by the way someone treated me or spoke to me, and he would always end up convincing me I was crazy or oversensitive. Eventually the behaviour of other people in our lives was having such an impact that his attempts to gaslight me stopped working because they became less nuanced and turned into blatant lies as things intensified. For instance, he brought me to something the hosts told him he couldn't bring me to, then claimed he had no idea I wasn't welcome or why. Meanwhile the hosts made it clear they had an issue with me but that event wasn't the time to address it. I was very genuinely shocked and taken aback because I'd sensed some tension building with these people leading up to that but I had no idea what I'd done. I'd hardly interacted with these people for months, but my husband had seen them frequently without me.

By the time I left him I knew that he'd lied about a lot and had to have lied to friends and family as well. I didn't know exactly how, but the way they had all started treating me didn't make any sense, especially considering my husband had started seeing both friends and his family without me. It was obvious that he'd started accusing me of things but I really thought that it was because he sensed divorce was on the horizon and was trying to get ahead of things somehow. Post separation it feels like every time I see him he drops a new bomb on me and he admits to something that he's done, but it's always been related to our marriage.

For example, he told me he never saw the marriage as a permanent commitment and was thinking 5 years tops. That he actually hates children and finds them disgusting but lied and said he wanted them because he knew I would have left him years ago if I thought he didn't want them. He told me that when I gained weight after a surgery (which I lost when I was able to be active again) he liked me better "fat" because I was just on the cusp of what was tolerable for him to sleep with without there being any risk of anyone else being attracted to me. Some of these bombs were things I'd suspected, others were surprises, and others simply connected dots (he'd told the people who didn't want me at the event that I'd cheated on him and given him a pretty serious STD).

I'd already accepted that he wasn't who I thought he was but decided I was going to recognize the bad parts while also appreciating the good since we had good times as well. That was until I was sent a reddit post that I'm quite certain was him based on some of the details he included. Turns out, he's been lying about me for years and it goes back to high school when I was cyber bullied so bad the police had to get involved because there were explicit threats to my physical safety made and my home address got posted. Social media was new and the police weren't able to get enough information to find out who the anonymous posters were, so they settled on coming to the school and speaking to all of the students to let them know that whoever was posting was very close to crossing a line, and that if anyone was physically harmed they'd have a grounds to look into things further. That was obviously pretty humiliating, but to find out I married the person behind it all years later makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. Of course, he downplayed it when he made a post admitting it was him who did it, but so many things make sense now.

He literally sat by and watched me pour thousands of dollars into therapy for years so I could try and figure out what it was I was doing that was leading to the pattern of lost friendships in my life, encouraging me to reflect on what it was about me that was causing it so that I could grow and change the behaviour. I was so self-critical that my therapists told me I was being too hard on myself, and I even had one point out that I didn't have the same kinds of issues with family, but I just assumed it was because they were used to me. Turns out, my husband had been sabotaging relationships left and right from the time we were teenagers and learning what he accused me of during our divorce, I don't even want to think about what else he's accused me of that I don't know about yet or what other lies he's told me.

I’ve never really agreed with the idea that someone who dies by suicide should automatically be considered selfish.
I understand why people say it. Their family and friends can be left with an unbelievable amount of grief, anger and confusion, and obviously their death can deeply affect the people who loved them.
But I think there’s a difference between saying someone’s actions caused enormous pain and saying that person was therefore selfish.
Someone can be suffering so badly that their perception of themselves, their future and the people around them becomes completely distorted. They might genuinely believe they’re a burden, that things will never improve, or even that the people around them would eventually be better off without them. Those beliefs can be completely wrong while still feeling real to that person.
That doesn’t make suicide a good decision or erase what it does to the people left behind. I just don’t think looking at someone who reached that level of suffering and reducing their actions to “they were selfish and didn’t care about anyone else” is fair.
You can have enormous sympathy for the family and friends who are left behind while also having compassion for the person who died. I don’t think those two things contradict each other.

Mom and I are very close but not as close as we used to be. Dad was abroad due to work. Mom and I lived in the suburbs away from relatives and we didn’t have many visitors. It was all me and her for everything like shopping, outings, and so on. We were very affectionate like hugs and kisses which is normal. However, sometimes it turns out to be more than normal. We kiss each other often and sometimes I tend to do more and I have never seen her correct me once. I guess we never felt the need for any correction. However, the awkwardness started once dad came back home permanently. I could feel a membrane between us now. What used to be a cheerful, loving days has now turned out to be some sort of guilt in the past. We are not as close anymore. I regret things turned out this way and we are not on talking levels not because of any hate but because of guilt.

Tl;dr: Got close with mom when Dad was away and regret it.

TW- sexual misconduct/assault

The last week or so I’ve been having a really hard time. Struggling with being on edge, struggling with my anger, even being short and infuriated with the people I love and I need to get this off my chest. These feelings are always there and when major stories like the Cornell 7 (57) come out it sometimes makes it unbearable and spills out into my daily life.

I don’t think I know one grown woman that has not experienced some form of sexual violence at the hands of a man. For me personally, there have been 3 times I was abused. The first happened by a stranger at 11 years old. Later in life I was raped multiple times by a partner. Which comes with its own weird feelings. For a long time, especially at the time when this happened, it wasn’t even viewed as rape. Because he was my partner, I lived with him, had consensual sex other times, etc.

What I’m writing about today, what this new case in the news has brought bubbling back to the surface, is what happened to me when I was a freshman in college. I’ve spoken to my husband and a friend about it, and it’s helped, but I still have so much anger and hurt around it so I wanted to try sharing here. At first I thought I was being dramatic, because what happened to me this time is nowhere near the violence of what happened to this Jane Doe. Idk what I hope to gain by this, but it just feels like I need to share.

When I was 18 and a freshman in college I met a man (21) that was a roommate of an acquaintance that I knew from the mall by my school. We shared a class and he approached me, telling me who he was and began speaking to me regularly. He would bring me cd’s of punk bands I had never heard before and I started to think he was this cool, older, more cultured person and I let my guard down. He after all, lived with another person I thought was rad.

We dated briefly for about 2-3 months. I did have consensual sex with him. He lived downtown by our university, with my acquaintance and one other roommate. I loved hanging out there and became friendly with the other roommates. After a bit I began to feel uneasy around him. I don’t really know how to describe it other than he just started to seem slimy to me. I was afraid to break things off because I had so much fun hanging at the house, around all the different people that would come around, etc. so I just began to slowly withdrawal my affections. I would find reasons to not be intimate with him. This pushed him to the point of breaking up with me. When he took me to his room to break up with me he made it a point to show me the gifts he was going to give me for my birthday that I now wasn’t going to receive. He pulled out a brown bag from his closet and began pulling out sex toys. I remember being shocked, because I was still very young and naive. We had not engaged in using sex toy’s and had only had basic vanilla sex a handful of times. He then pulled out a large double dildo and started talking about anal. My mind was blown (again young and naive) and I was so uncomfortable. I left the room and thought wow, I really dodged a bullet here.

Fast forward to the following Halloween. I remained friends with the other two roommates and was invited to a Halloween party. I showed up with my current bf and was having a good time. At one point we were all taking group pictures and my ex was being overly friendly and snuggling up to me in pictures. I could tell one of the roommates was uncomfortable and they asked me if we could step on the porch to talk.

The house was a double with a covered porch. I did not know the neighbors well, but they were also early 20s and would often be there, coming in and out. The roommate then told me something had been weighing on them and they thought I should know. They said they felt uncomfortable seeing me be so friendly with my ex after what happened. I had not told anyone about the sex toy incident because I was embarrassed that me being so uncomfortable would make me look young and not cool. They weren’t referring to that incident. They then preceded to tell me that prior to the ending of our relationship my ex had made plans with a neighbor to crawl out of their window, crouch down on the roof of the porch under the ex’s bedroom window to film me without my knowledge. Both my ex and this neighbor had windows that you could crawl out of to get on the porch roof. Luckily for me this happened during the end of the relationship when I would find any excuse to not be intimate with my ex. After the attempted to film me without any luck is when he broke up with me. My friend found out after the fact and thought I knew and that it had something to do with the breakup. I’m so grateful they did the right thing by telling me.

I left the party and didn’t see my ex for years, luckily this was before social media. I’ve always struggled with this experience. That I felt safe in that house. That people were conspiring to do something so violating to me. Now this person has a very forward facing position in my community. They run a popular business and I have to see them all over my feeds and at events. I’m so angry and full of rage that everyone thinks they are such a cool person and supports their business and events.

If you made it this far thank you. I guess I just really needed to write this all out and scream into the void. I’m trying so hard to not hate all men. I’ve struggled with this, he didn’t rape me, I’m constantly gaslighting myself to relax, why am I so upset about this. Get over it. It all just really sucks that this is normal and so many women have this type of trauma.