Online friend is stuck in life and bringing me down

Tldr; long time online friend is stuck in life and I can’t help him, at the same time he’s basically holding me hostage in this friendship and I don’t know what to do anymore

I met this friend in an online RTS game when we were around 15 and for many years I was happy to have him as my online friend.

But lately we have crossed paths - I have a job, hobbies, friends, and he is just stuck in life.

He’s 33, never had a job, despite him being a coding genius and always having some personal projects at home. The thought of looking for a job is like giving him trauma and his father is still sending him money.

He lives alone, has no friends IRL and often claims that I am now his only friend. He gets needy and often demands attention when I don’t check messages on Discord for days like a sad pup.

I tried helping him for years to just finish a CV and start looking for work, I got him a few freelancing gigs and he made some small money, but he’s got literally no personal initiative while at the same time dreams of owning a business. Honestly I think he doesn’t want to be employed because he can’t bear the real life of working night and day which is a norm in his country despite laws against it.

By this time, every time he talks to me it makes me feel weaker. Like I can’t help him and like there’s a problem to be solved that I can’t touch anymore. Nothing worked, he’s still squandering his life away alone in his room, broke and spending time on useless bs and video games.

I want to do better in life. I can’t continue pretending like everything’s okay and we’re gonna experiment with open source AI libraries for fun while he’s broke and miserable.

At this point I am sometimes ignoring his messages. I just cannot anymore… it drains me. It makes me feel tired and weak chatting to him already.

At the same time he tells me how I’m his only friend and how he doesn’t know what he’d do without me cause he gets depression and anxiety and he likes talking to me. That is guilt tripping me and I feel responsible for him although I shouldn’t. He won’t go to therapy because he believes in his country no psychologist would take him seriously.

What can I do? I want to be happy and build a better life and his mentality is contageous and is dragging me down as well. Whenever I have fun or have a good thing to share he keeps comparing us and how I’m so great and how he’s so miserable and cannot do or have what I have. It’s making me feel miserable about the good stuff.

I can’t be his parent. I can’t think about his career and his projects or his bank account. I can’t have his mental wellbeing as weight on my shoulders or whether he will fail in life or not, or feel guilty when he is lonely because he has no friends, and I struggle making conversation with such a huge elephant in the room. Whenever I bring it up it’s like he’s on the verge of a panic attack.

Sometimes he plays victim like there’s no solutions for him but all he does is sees problems and no opportunities - he makes me feel like he would be suicidal if I stop talking to him.

What do I do?

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* This article was originally published here

If you use these 4 phrases regularly, you're more likely to form healthy relationships than most, says psychologist - NBC Southern California

If you use these 4 phrases regularly, you're more likely to form healthy relationships than most, says psychologist  NBC Southern California

* This article was originally published here

I (26f) kinda want to break up with my boyfriend (30m) but I don’t want to lose my benefits

i understand that my bf is not insurance.

my bf helps me out a lot. he likes to provide. he likes to give me things that he thinks would be good for my apartment. he likes to surprise me with bubble baths even though i could care less for a bubble bath. he likes to book helicopter rides because he wants to be cutesy and romantic and that’s his thing. but i’m not cutesy or romantic.

i like a lot of things he does for me though. cooks me food, picks up my meds, gives me money sometimes, cleans my house, organizes my closets.

i know i sound like i’m just using him. but i feel like it’s more of an exchange thing going on. i wash his underwear and have sex with him. if he says can we move the bed against the wall instead of the middle of the room, i do it. and he doesn’t even live with me. when i go grocery shopping, i buy things that i know he likes.

but he is such a douche. when he was trying to surprise me with the romantic bubble bath, he asked me where the candle we didn’t use yet was. i said i forgot where i put it. i asked him if he could just use the one we already used because it still had lots of wax left. he got a kinda aggressive tone with me and said no where is the new candle. i said idk. then he woke me up from my sleep and told me to come take the bubble bath with him. it was pretty. he put vines along the tub and on the shower pole. he turned off the lights and had both candles lit. he had a nice soothing playlist. and i said wowww this is nice just to be kind . and i told him to make sure he took a picture of it once we got out of the tub.

well i guess that he didn’t like that i only spent 10 minutes in the tub with him because i don’t really like baths and i was getting too hot. then he took everything down and starting taking a shower and i said bae did u take a pic before u took everything down and he said nah maybe next time. so that pissed me off.

some other fucked up shit that he does is stick his penis in me without a condom.he put his penis in me with no condom while i was in the laundry room. i told him i don’t wanna have unprotected sex. he also is controlling. and he’s stupid. he said “do u really not want me to cum in you?” like it was a shock to him. i said do you really want to cum in me because it’s all fun and games and it not thinking about the repercussions at all? i’m not a birth control or anything. him doing that really makes me angry. i don’t think i can get over that.

but if i lose him i lose my benefits. i lose fun times. i lose cooking together. i lose the parts that i like. and i’m not trying to go back on the dating apps and start again for the 100th time. even though we’ve only known each other for less than 2 months. so i’m conflicted. i did block him today but i unblocked him after thinking about all the things he does for me.

tl;dr: wanna break up with my bf but don’t wanna lose the good tomes

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How do I get over my girlfriend not being a virgin?

I (18 M) started to talking to this girl (18) for a while now and honestly things are perfect. Just amazing. She's super funny, and chill and... she's just great. We're not dating yet as we both talked about it and decided to take it slow.

So now we were talking and the conversation of virginity came up. To get straight to the point, she' not and I am. I handled it well. Didn't make her feel bad or anything. I have been in a few relationships but I guess this is a new one for me? Look I get it... people have pasts. I'm truly not judging. It was before my time. But why do I feel weird about it? Like this feeling genuinely sucks.

Am I planning on breaking up with her?

No! Definitely not.

But I can't get rid of this feeling. And I don't want to look at her a different way but I'm starting to feel the way I see her chnage. And I don't want to close with feeling off. Done it before. Not it.

So how can I get over this? This is just a little phase right? My little ego being shattered? I just don't want to keep going like this while talking to this amazing girl. I feel childish and immature. I've built myself up from a previous relationship that was just toxic. But now I feel all that progress of me growing up is gone.

Any advice on how to get over this? Some tough/brutal words? A Swift kick in the ass or a nice slap to get my damn head on straight? Because I'm not going to end things just cause of that. I need to make this work. I really like her :(

Thank you!

**TL;DR: Found out the girl I'm talking to has already had sex. I'm not going to break up with her over that but I feel hella weird about it and need some words/advice on how to deal with it. Not willing to lose her because she's not a virgin and I am.

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Another gay breakup story

Another gay breakup story .

My boyfriend left me because he found out i had a gay Facebook account .

Me ( 26 Y ) and my boyfriend ( 26 Y ) have been together for like 9 months , everything was so perfect till i started my residency and became extremely busy , i might be working 60 h continually , ofcourse our meetings have been reduced , our texts , our calls and everything . Even when we meet i - involuntary - fall asleep while talking to him . We fought a lot cause he felt i was withdrawing myself on purpose , i truly wasn’t . Back then at the beginning of our dating we agreed to be exclusive and delete every gay accounts anywhere . We both agreed and i had this stupid Gay Facebook account which i used to look at shirtless guys and wank , never met anybody over it . I opened that account again when we used to fight a lot cause i needed to masturbate , he knows my phone password and found out this account and left me , got over me in no time and started to see other people . I never cheated on him , in fact i even stayed like 5 months after we broke up can’t have sex with other men cause it felt wrong and i felt my body is still his . I started to move on but i can’t help feeling it was my fault ( and it really was ) but also can’t help feeling this stupid account was an excuse for him to leave cause he couldn’t handle he wasn’t the priority during my residency . TL;DR;: my boyfriend left cause he found out i have gay account though i didn’t cheat on him

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Me (25F) feeling hurt and confused by partners lack of replying. Relationship just under a year long. Am I being unreasonable? If so could someone enlighten me on the behaviour

TL;DR Hey folks, I feel rather silly about this but don’t know where else to turn for advice.

My partner won’t reply to my messages for 3-9+ hours even though he will go online regularly during that time (via messenger). At points I will be left on read for hours as well. He also hardly ever calls me but will speak to other people in his life regularly if not daily on the phone.

I understand when he is busy or working, but over the past few it has become a regular occurrence (even when he has had weeks off work). It makes me feel as if there is a lack of interest in me and that I’m not a priority. I have found that it also makes me anxious as I sit and wonder why he would actively communicate with others but not me.

Personally I wouldn’t not reply to his messages if I were online as I care about him and like hearing off him. Maybe I shouldn’t be adding my own meaning to his behaviour but I honestly don’t understand why someone would do this to their so.

I have mentioned it to him and he says “he is working” but the behaviour carries on out of work hours as well as his time off.

Any advice or insight on this behaviour would be massively appreciated. Also if I’m in the wrong and need to correct my own take on contact etc please let me know. Many thanks from a stressed little human.

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* This article was originally published here

This daily habit all couples do could be killing your relationship, says expert - but the advice has proved to be ... - goodtoknow

This daily habit all couples do could be killing your relationship, says expert - but the advice has proved to be ...  goodtoknow

* This article was originally published here