I met her at my work as she was a new employee so I chatted with her and got to know her. From the beginning, I’ve liked her and I always tried to chat her up and spend more time with her at work. I obviously respected boundaries and only did it in a friendly way, but I don’t know how it happened but she started to ask me to come to chat with her more and spend more time with her.

While nothing too serious has happened while we’ve been hanging out and chatting for the past few months, she has dropped quite a few hints for me. It’s like every time she sees me she blushes, she makes little comments about my appearance and my personality, just a bunch of stuff that seems to make her feelings quite obvious. I’ve been doing the same back when I feel it’s appropriate to let her know how I see her as well and I pay attention to her responses to make sure I’m not overstepping and boundaries.

To me, it just seems like a massive green light to try and establish something before she starts to think that I’m a lost cause that won’t make a move. For example, she recently asked me if I liked another girl I was chatting with. It seems like if I don’t make my feelings clear, she will start to think that I like someone else or just don’t like her.

However, her life just isn’t very relationship friendly. We chat a lot at work, but her parents are extremely controlling and don’t allow her to spend time with her school friends, so I seriously doubt they’d allow for an older guy to take her to the movies or something. I don’t know how I should move forward with this relationship as it seems the only time we can see each other is when we’re working. We’ve been texting lately but I was never a fan of that kind of stuff and I just can’t keep a conversation with her that way. I think I know the answer, that I need to decide to give up on her or decide to wait, but I just don’t want to close myself off to her and make the decision.

Also for what I feel is the elephant in the room, the age difference. Legally the age difference is acceptable where I live (12 years). There’s still a moral argument which I personally think is far more important than legality, personally, I feel like an insecure guy… there’s no special thing that separates me from her. That being said it’s still something that concerns me and makes me feel guilty because I’ve always looked down upon age gaps till I had feelings for her, I’ll let others decide what to think and I’ll accept it.

People will judge me, she is 18 I’m 30…

Kinda feel violated by my GF

I’m 37(m) and I kinda feel like my gf violates me. When we get in arguments her way of getting out of it is to initiate intimate activities.

It has been getting worse and worse lately. We have been saving for a house for the last 6 months because I’m over this renting business.

This morning I noticed a charge from Gucci on our joint credit card for $863 bucks. Apparently, a clutch was more important than our future family home.

When I confronted her she began to grope me in an attempt to change the conversation. I informed her that I am withdrawing consent at the moment because I really wanted to talk.

She continued to push forward with unwelcomed touches. I know this sounds crazy coming from a man but it makes me feel cheap and violated.

Netizen’s comments

• Not cool… disrespecting your boundaries in a serious and harmful way. She sounds like she needs therapy (not being sarcastic)…you deserve better.

• They both need therapy. Him so he can heal from this and her so she can be taught that this isn’t okay.

• If this was gender reversed a lot of people would say he needs jail, not therapy. Not saying that as slight to you opinion, but an observation to the double standard. I agree. They both need help

So in fact, my brother was born quite exactly one year before I was born and died when he was one month old due to a heart problem.

My father completely weird about these things, decided not to talk about his death. So I always assumed that he was buried. Fast forward to my twenties, I’ve had a boyfriend, let’s just call him psycho we were laying in bed a Sunday around midnight and he was telling me stories from his life.

Like the time he did a courage test with his friend when he was young. It consisted in walking into the nearby cemetery and peeing on a grave. The first to run away would lose. So they peed on a grave,

Psycho on a smaller grave which wasn’t like the normal ones, these little graves were aligned the horizontal way, the normal ones the vertical way. This night he dreamt of a little boy coming out of the grave and being angry with him because he made a mess out of “his home” Suddenly, I tell him to put his shoes on and get his jacket.

He wanted to know what was going on. I couldn’t explain it, I just knew I had to go with him. He wanted to drive his car, I said no and took the keys. Without ever having been in that cemetery, i drove there, i knew instinctively where to drive..we arrived to the main, big entry of that cemetery, and I tell him: we have to walk that way and then turn right.. pointing at some candle lights in the back of the cemetery. He was so mindblown, but told me: if you are searching the grave where I’ve peed on, I’m quite sure it was back there but on the left side. We searched and searched, in the middle of the night, more than one hour, but nothing familiar to me.

We went back home but I couldn’t sleep. Next day I’ve asked my father where my brother was burried and he answered me..it was exactly that cemetery and after I asked for the grave number I’ve found out, that psycho peed on my brother’s grave… In fact it was going on the right side, exactly where I felt I should have searched.

A girl shared how she hates the degree that she is studying for, which she used to be passionate about in the past.

Here is the story:

I hate the degree I was once passionate about
I’m now half way through my final year of study but everyday feels like an emotional burden. I’ve tried to stay focused on the positives but I now I just feel empty.

Luckily my degree is vocational and the job easily has vacancies available but the thought of working in the field seriously makes me want to quit everything.

I’ve mustered up the courage to tell my parents I don’t want to go down the conventional job route for the degree after graduating but I feel terrified to tell them I want nothing to do with it at all, especially since they have supported me so well since the beginning.

It’s starting to play on my mind now, I feel unmotivated, can’t focus on the work, don’t feel to reach out to friends much anymore or make new friends, I’ve stopped going to the gym and more.

I seriously want to escape from feeling this way but I also want to leave with my degree I once loved and worked so hard for.

So I am gay and I le other girls like me… I’m here in this country where gay rights are almost non existent and that also means no marriage rights yet! Most of my family is homophobic so I don’t tell them much about my life, I’ve come out to my parents but they didn’t take it well so I’ve stopped telling them anything

Now whenever there is any kind of family function every relative and every person in the party will make it a point to come and ask me what is my plans for marriage, I ask them why they so concerned and they be like I’m the youngest girl in the family it’s time you are 27 bla bla bla… for few instances I just changed the topic, but now it’s getting really annoying, now my answers are typically I don’t wanna get married, or why should I be married or I just ask them the pros of getting married and the last one I love when they struggle to find a proper answer

Anyways at a recent function one of my cousins (is like in her later 30s) asked me why I’m not deciding to get married, and if something is wrong with me (I kid you not she asked me this) and I asked her what does she mean by something being wrong with me… she said she recently saw my FB post where I was talking about gay rights and she thinks that I plan to “change my sides of interest” …. all I replied was how bad would it be if that happened? She said “you know you’re going to hell right if you change your sides” … oh my that was trigger point so i replied “oh ya! You’d know all about sins and going to hell, cause you’ve done a couple of them yourself (got pregnant before marriage .. not that I believe in all this but I was in a real Tit for Tat mood)

She got furious, stormed out went and complained to my parents about what a jerk I was and my parents and entire family have been calling me names!!!!

But how is it my fault when someone is like deliberately trying to trigger me!

It’s my 2 year anniversary of quitting smoking

I was a pack a day smoker for 14 years. I quit the week we went into Covid lockdown but that’s not why I quit.

The hardest part was accepting that I was going to start actively choosing life. I never thought I’d live past 12 years old.

I didn’t want to be here and if I was going to forced to, I would at least help speed the process.

Well 2 years ago I chose to stop chasing death and be present not only for my friends and family but also myself.

It’s been a jarring experience but here I am. I’m actively in therapy. I started working out, lost 30lbs and my doctor is no longer concerned about me being pre-diabetic.

I haven’t had any heartburn. My anxiety has significantly decreased, and gums don’t bleed at the dentist anymore.

Happy 2 year anniversary to my new life.

Netizens’ comments

• Happy anniversary. I hope life is treating you well. That’s super impressive

• Way to go, OP!! You deserve to love your life.

• I quit 3 years ago after being a pack a day smoker for over 30 years. I still crave it today. But I’m not going back. Props for staying quit!!

A netizen shared how she called her sister’s boyfriend ugly and lazy and kicked him out of the house after he made fun of her boyfriend.

Here is the story:

I have been dating my boyfriend Ryan for 1 year now. Last week was his birthday and I threw him a surprise birthday dinner with our parents, siblings, and close friends at my house.

Our families get along great and it was a very relaxing evening for all of us, until the incident. My sister had brought her new BF of 3 months, Max.

When Ryan was 14 he suffered serious burns from a fire and was in the ICU for weeks. Fortunately, he recovered but the left part of his face and a decent part of his neck is now scarred, he lost his left eye and 1.5 finger, and his left arm is barely functional due to scar tissue.

I find him very handsome, not only because I love his personality but the “healthy” part of his face is clearly objectively very attractive and he has a decent dad bod which I love.

However, he can be insecure about his injuries when it comes to dating because he dated a couple of girls in the past that turned out to have a fetish for scars that creeped him out. He isn’t comfortable with strangers commenting on his appearance but doesn’t mind joking about it with his close friends. He is generally a shy guy but has a great sense of humor and a lot of friends.

Later in the night, it was us, his brother, and my 2 sisters with their partners. Max had a little too much to drink and was getting vocal about Ryan’s appearance.

It started with curious questions but then he made inappropriate comments about how I must be into ”freaky stuff” and bad boys and apparently pirates?? He also said that he must have gotten his job out of pity (Ryan is a an interior designer while Max is unemployed by choice).

I warned him to stop since Ryan was getting uncomfortable. The last straw was when Max said “Why would you date an old and ugly guy unless you have some weird fetish, does his burnt arm and his missing finger turn you on?”

I saw red. I told him “If anyone is ugly here it’s you, not only is your personality terrible but your face could use some help as well. Maybe [sister’s name] has a fetish for lazy ugly men.” Then I kicked everyone out, it was late anyway and the mood was ruined. My sister was silent the whole time, she didn’t even look embarrassed.

I’m not asking if I was right to defend my bf but I feel bad for calling Max out on his appearance. I recognize now that it was a low blow. There is nothing wrong with his face, he’s a regular guy, I just couldn’t control my anger after his stupid comments.

Ryan found my explosion hilarious. My sister isn’t returning my texts but my mother called me and told me that I should apologize to her because I embarrassed her bf and her taste in front of others. My sister is still dating that idiot, her argument was that this is just his sense of humor, he enjoys dark humor and Ryan should have learned to deal with it after all these years.

For privacy reasons we’ll call her “Charlotte.” Just for a bit of backstory, Charlotte and I first became friends two years ago.

She was really nice and we would literally face time 3 times a day. I always had sort of a crush on her and I tried to suppress that emotion because I knew that she probably didn’t feel the same way towards me.

Everything was going really well up until the end of the year. We got into a huge argument because her and her friends were making fun of me at school and one of my friends had overheard their conversation.

Whenever I asked Charlotte about if she really said those things about me she would continually deny it and get really defensive.

Eventually, we stayed as friends as I was scared that I would lose her because if I did end up losing her then who else would I talk to?

We had our fair share of ups and downs for the next while and it started going even more downhill on valentines day.

I thought it would be a good idea to tell her that I liked her so later that night when we started face timing, I ended up telling her. (I know that was a dumb idea please don’t judge me).

The worst part about the whole thing is that she gave me the “I’m not ready for a relationship yet” even though she had already been in a relationship with someone else before. I was quite upset after but I got over it eventually and things carried on as normal.

Fast forward to the start of this year and I noticed that Charlotte started showing a lot of the signs of liking me.

I decided to tell her again that I liked her and once again, she gave me the same response as before. (Me telling her this was months after the first time don’t worry).

This next part of the story is the reason why I wanted to post this. So soon after I told her for the second time, she starts out of nowhere starts talking about her other guy friends.

(Note: she’s never done this before and it was pretty obvious she started doing this to make me jealous)

I hated when she did this so after a while, I told her to stop but guess what? She didn’t stop. It got to the point where I ghosted her for a week because it was really starting to screw me up.

Eventually I got really fed up with it and I decided to talk to her about it. Long story short, we got into a big fight over text and we stopped being friends.

I started to realize that I relied so heavily on her to bring me joy that I couldn’t find any when she wasn’t around. My life became an absolute mess. After a few weeks and going to two different therapists, I’m starting to do better now. She hasn’t reached out to me in almost a week and honestly, I think that says a lot.

For the longest time in my life I always thought of her as “the one” but I never truly realized that there are so many other people out there for me who are bound to treat me with way more respect than she ever did. I still think about her a lot because I miss talking to her every night but then I realize that no matter how many times I fantasize over her, nothing is going to ever make her want to come back to me.