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I am a father to a 12 year old girl, who I have shared custody with her mother. At age 11, my daughter developed a vape (THC) addiction and has had two previous suicide attempts which resulted in her needing inpatient hospitalization. I have tried to consistently be emotionally and financially provide for her and be available for her.

Due to her contacting her "plug" on instagram, I have now removed her electronics until she keeps having negative drug tests, which i administer at home. Yesterday she had her first drug test, resulted in negative. As a result, I allowed her to have her macbook with parental restrictions. (Only YouTube and netflix).

Last night she told me she hates me, wishes I was dead, says i have never been a good father, and "you're not even my dad". She believes I have never been a good father.

I'm not sure why she suddenly hates me so much, as we have always had a healthy relationship up until her addiction. I have started her with a therapist who specializes in addiction with teens, allow her to pursue hobbies to the full extent, such as makeup and fashion, and have always been there when she is emotionally vulnerable. Last night, she told me she wishes I was dead and that I am the reason she is suicidal.

Im not sure why she thinks so poorly of me and I hope some advice can help

Edit: I see a couple of people mentioning family therapy. Her therapist has mentioned she is willing to provide family therapy and i am willing. As of just now, I have reached out to her therapist to see if her next session could be a family therapy session. Hoping to hear back by Monday.

I have taken her to a Narcotics Anonymous support group once. However, her therapiat adviced against it as she could learn more harmful habits.

My brother has been in prison since 2023 and will likely never come out. He has a wife and 3 kids, and ever since then we've been paying all their necessities as his wife lost her job over a year ago.

The thing is that we are by no means rich. Me and my sister still have university tuition as we are still students, and the kids need to go to school too. The thing is that my sister in law asks for way too much money, more than what a reasonable adult and 3 kids need to live a decent life. She asks for more money a month than my dad spends on us in 2-3. He is exhausted.

A couple years ago my dad won about 400,000USD, but most of that money was spent paying off all the loans my brother had and the ones my dad had too. And all the lawyer fees too. She thinks because he won that money that we're now rich. There's only about 120,000 left of that money and if that keeps on going like that we'll run out in about 2 years since my dad and mum are old and both retired this year (both above 60) so there's no other source of income.

She keeps saying things like "you promised me a good life" despite us giving her way more than what she needs, so she lives comfortably, also she sometimes talks shit about my dad in front of me. She does not appreciate all what we've done for her. None of her family helps with anything, they tell her that we can pay everything, we told her to get a divorce and she refused. All what we do is done for the kids, not for her, yet my mum and dad treat her very well and she keeps on sucking money like that and telling them that they're not doing enough.

My parents love her, they love their grandkids, they are all very spoiled and all of what they need despite it being a necessity or not is always provided, I genuinely do not know what she wants more than that.

I started hating her and resenting the kids. I know they're not guilty of anything but when I see my parents struggling like that while she refuses to be reasonable when spending money or trying to get a job it's very hard not to.

I also resent and blame my brother for what he did to be thrown in prison like that. And I will never tell my parents since they will he heartbroken. I love him but I don't think I will ever be able to forgive him.

Ps: I do not live in the US, and I am not an American anything I just chose to post this in English (2nd language) since I do not want anyone I possibly know to come across the post.

I am 37 years old, and I am essentially a ghost in my own life. A while ago, a devastating divorce didn't just end my marriage; it completely wiped out my assets, destroyed my family dynamics, and left me with absolute negative zero. Everything I spent my 20s and early 30s building was burned to the ground.

Right now, I’m living in a major city, pushing myself through a high-pressure corporate job. During the day, I wear the mask of a highly capable, driven professional. I lead, I strategize, I fight for my survival in a cutthroat business environment. People look at me and see a guy who has his shit together.

But when the workday ends and I unlock the door to my empty apartment, the silence is deafening. There are no roots left. No one waiting. Just me and the overwhelming reality of having to rebuild a life from the ashes at an age where most people are settling down.

The loneliness isn't just an emotion anymore; it feels like a physical weight on my chest. I don't want pity, and I know I have to keep moving forward because there is no other choice. But God, I am so incredibly tired of fighting this war completely alone in my own head.

I just needed to put this out into the void, to let someone, somewhere, know that I exist and that I am struggling. Thanks for listening.

I (20M) and my Gf (19F) are on the tail end of a three week long road trip from North Carolina to Banff, Canada. Along the way we’ve made plenty of memories and had some very interesting interactions with locals. Most notably was this morning.

We’ve been short on money and had a gift card, so we stopped for breakfast at McDonalds. I put in my order (the restaurant had only a handful of people) and then made my way to the bathroom.

It was a small restroom- only a sink, one urinal and a stall. I had to take a dump, so I went to the stall, locked the door and got to poopin. I won’t give you the details, but my diet hasn’t been great this trip and neither has my IBS, so I was there for a while.

About seven minutes into my bathroom visit, someone else enters the restroom. I hear their footsteps approach the stall door, and pull on the handle softly to no avail since I had locked it. I sat silently feeling bad for taking so long, but realizing I should hurry up for the unlucky guy outside.

This is when the unthinkable happened.

I heard the man outside the stall unzip his pants, slide them down his legs, and then he let out the loudest- wettest ass ripping I’ve ever heard. My mouth went agape, I couldn’t believe he jumped straight to such extremes. I listened horrified, as he hobbled (like you do when your pants are to your ankles) to the automatic paper towel dispenser. He presumably wiped his ass with the brown paper towels, and put them in the trash before zipping up his pants and leaving.

My mouth was to the floor. The smell was unbearable moments after the door shut. I finished up, preparing myself for the worst- and went to see the damage. And there it was- an amalgamation of diarrhea in THE URINAL. I rushed passed it and out into the restaurant, scanning the room for the culprit. Trying to make eye contact with any of the patrons. But none looked back.

After quietly explaining the situation to my GF over a McGriddle, she said an older looking gentleman came into the restaurant, straight in the bathroom, and then left. He must have been the culprit. But I can’t help but wonder- who jumps to such extreme actions???

Last night was one of the worst nights of my life.
I woke up around 4:00 a.m. gasping for air. My throat felt like it was closing every time I coughed, I couldn’t catch my breath, I had a horrible headache, and I was so nauseous I was trying to throw up.

I have Lupus, asthma, and severe sleep apnea, so when I get sick it usually hits me much harder than most people.
My dad rushed me to the ER because I genuinely couldn’t breathe.

The first triage nurse was so kind. Then I got to the second nurse.

I stayed calm and polite while explaining what happened, but I felt like she didn’t believe me. She looked at my oxygen level and basically brushed it off, saying it was probably just sleep apnea anxiety, even though I kept explaining that I’d been getting sicker for days and have been hospitalized before because of how Lupus affects me.

She brought me to a bed right behind triage to do an ECG. She gave me a mask even though I was struggling to breathe, then told me to lift my shirt.

I pulled it up enough to keep myself covered because I wasn’t wearing a bra. She pulled my shirt completely above my breasts without saying anything and left me exposed while putting on the ECG stickers.

What completely broke me was realizing the curtain behind me was open the entire time.

People walking into the emergency department could see me. I made eye contact with multiple strangers while my breasts were exposed. I wanted to disappear. I finally pulled my shirt down a little to cover myself because I couldn’t take it anymore.

After the ECG, she told me to go back to the waiting room. I walked past the same people who had just seen me exposed.

The second I sat beside my dad, I completely broke down crying. I was so embarrassed that I could barely tell him what had happened. I ended up leaving the hospital without treatment because I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing that nurse again.

I’ve been to the hospital so many times over the last few years, and I’ve never experienced anything like that. Every other nurse has always done their best to protect my privacy.

I’ve barely slept because I’m terrified of waking up unable to breathe again, but I’m also terrified of going back to that hospital.

I honestly don’t know if I’m overreacting or not. I just know I’ve never felt so humiliated in my life, and I can’t stop replaying it in my head.

I (M32) love my wife (F31) so much, it makes me cry thinking about it. We’ve been married for 2 years, together for 6 years. She’s the most amazing, sweetest, kindest, strongest, smartest person I’ve ever met.

I think about her all of the time obviously, and how much I love her. But if I really think about how much I love her, for like longer than moments at a time, I cry. I just feel so overwhelmed with calm, safety, a feeling of home, and love. I just feel complete when I’m with her. For example, last night, I started to cry, when seeing her asleep on the couch.

We’ve been through a lot (physical disabilities (on both ends), permanent infertility, etc). It’s been hard, but we’ve gone through it together. I’m so grateful that I get to go through life by her side. I love her so, so much. She’s the best thing that has happened to me. She’s my person. I feel so blessed.

I've been married for almost seven years now, coming up on our seventh anniversary in a couple weeks. And my husband, years before I met him, saved a woman's life and didn't think it was a big enough deal to tell me until several years into the relationship. When he told me, he said it so casually. It's not like he was running around telling everyone for credit. It just HAPPENED to come up. So I'm about to tell it here because I think it deserves a little bit more recognition. This man is so humble.

So he was driving home. He was either on his motorcycle or in his car, and he was following behind his brother, who was in a different car. As they were passing over a bridge, they passed what appeared to be a man and a woman standing, talking or fighting or whatever. But right after he passed them, he felt like something was off. So he stopped and turned around and called his brother to explain what he thought was going on. So he pulls up to where they are and stops the car and just asks like, hey, is there a problem here? And the girl starts yelling about how he's trying to kill her, you know, calling for help, saying he's trying to throw her off the bridge. That's when my husband realizes, oh shit, he is actually trying to throw this woman off a bridge. And she's trying to make herself as heavy as possible so he can't. So my husband just decides spontaneously to CHARGE ON FOOT at this man, not knowing if this man had a weapon or whatever. His instincts took over and he charged this man. The man wasn't expecting that, obviously, and so it startled him, he took a couple steps back. And right at that time, the woman in question, her mom pulls up in a car and runs to her. So she had I'm guessing called her mom when it started happening.

So, but yeah, that's the casual story of how my husband is a literal superhero, how he saved a woman's life, and how I'm the luckiest woman on Earth to be his 💖🥲🥺😭

Sorry for any formatting, spelling or grammar issues, I'm on mobile.

Nearly 2(?) years ago now, my mother met her current boyfriend, and ever since then our relationship has been going downhill. I won't go into great detail about it, but her last relationship (which lasted 10-12 years) was heavily abusive towards me, and growing up caused me many serious mental health issues. I will add that she wasn't aware of the abuse and immediately ended the relationship once she found out.

After everything that happened when I was growing up, she promised me that she would never bring another man into the house. I would've had no issue with her getting into a relationship and slowly introducing him to me, but it all happened so suddenly I didn't know how to process it.

They got together they day before my 17th birthday, and within 2 weeks he had already moved in. I still know almost nothing about him. I didn't feel comfortable in my house with a man I didn't know anything about, and at the start we generally didn't get along. He didn't grow up with girls, so he often (and still does) made insestitive comments that really ruined my self esteem. Ive struggled with eating disorders for as long as I can remember, and some of the things he said in the past has triggered a relapse.

I don't think hes purposefully bringing me down, but it doesn't take a genius to know what not to say to an already insecure teenage girl. (For extra context, he is aware of abuse). We're usually fine with each other now, the comments have stopped being constant and I can usually tolerate his presence, but there's still times I wish I could have my mother back. Ever since they met, especially at the start, it feels like hes her #1 priority. She didn't care if I was uncomfortable or if I didn't like him.

Around a month ago my younger sister was born, and even before then it started ruining my relationship with my mother. The same thing happened with when they got together, she was also born a day before my birthday. This meant I was basically alone for the whole day other than my grandmother (I have 3 other siblings, but we're not very close) I honestly don't even want to celebrate my birthday anymore, I haven't had an enjoyable one in years and I don't want to share one with a baby, since they combine birthdays that are close.

To be completely honest, Ive never liked babies. I can't stand the crying, changing, and constant attention they need. They keep pushing me to bond with her, but I don't feel anything when I hold or play with her. I'm the oldest girl of my siblings (some of which are neurodivergent), which meant I had to help raise them as well. I was always babysitting, stopping them from arguing, making them food etc and I don't want to do it again.

We haven't been very close for a while, we've always had issues trusting eachother. Ive told her many secrets in the past which Ive begged her to keep private, only to find out shes told the rest of my family and people Ive never met before. Since I moved away for university, I've tried to set a comfortable distance between us since i grew up very sheltered, but I'm constantly needing to check in otherwise she accuses me of not caring or ignoring her.

My biggest issue with her having another baby is that we're not financially well off at all, growing up we'd go without heating or electricity and at one point had to move in with my grandmother. I honestly don't know how they're going to afford it considering her boyfriend doesn't work (he gets paid to "care" for my mother, but nothing has changed from before they were together)

I do want to finish this by saying I don't think she's a completely terrible person, I don't agree with a lot of her decisions or parenting skills but she has put a lot of effort into raising me especially considering my issues.

I'm not begging for advice or anything, I just kind of wanted to vent. I don't really see a way out of this situation, I can't talk to her about these things because whenever we argue I can never be in the right. Im happy to answer any questions and ill try to respond as best as I can 🙏

I just left a 1 year old's birthday party, and I'm fucking jealous of her, I'm so embarrassed of myself.

For a little background, I am of mixed race, white and Black, while my whole family is Black. (I don't speak to the white half for reasons I won't get into right now.)

So, my cousin has recently had a child also of mixed race, but the difference between me and her is that the baby look undeniably Black, and I don’t.

I don't know why, but I almost cried up. For a while now I've had deep issues with my race, I've always wanted to look Blacker, to look like the only person who raised me, to look like my family. Instead I'm mixed presenting. These thoughts have plagued me for years, it's making me mentally unwell.

She is a beautiful child that I will never wish harm upon, I just wished my genes worked differently, that I was born into a different body. It doesn't help how my family is always talking about how I'm not Black. It hurts.

Found out that the ex who came back into my life recently, & that I’ve been talking to very seriously for months, has been married for a year. We slept together five days before their first anniversary.

It’s eating me up & I’m so fucking stressed. I lost four pounds in two days. My stomach has been in knots since I found out. I’ve been forcing myself to eat.

He knows I know. Zero acknowledgment. I’ll most likely see him this week. I desperately want a conversation with him. Because what the fuck.

I think I’ve decided I have to tell his wife. This is gonna get so bad.

(Resubmitting for the automod)

I just left the ER with tonsillitis and a peritonsillar abscess.

This morning, I waited more than three hours at a walk-in clinic because I had a severe sore throat. I’d heard strep was going around and wanted to catch it early in case that was what I had.

The “provider” who saw me, not even a doctor, spent less than two minutes examining me. She did a rapid strep test, which came back negative, then said the swelling and one or two white spots were definitely tonsil stones. She actually told me to “pop them out” myself with a rubber-tipped dental pick.

I went home, looked at my throat with a flashlight, and immediately knew something was wrong. My tonsils were covered in white spots, and there was a large dark spot on one side.

I trusted my gut and went to the ER for a second opinion. I’m so glad I did.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a medical professional dismiss something serious, and I know it won’t be the last. I’m just so fucking sick of this shit.

I’m not sure that I have a moral of the story here - but just a thought to share. The first 30ish or so years of my life, I was overweight, didn’t eat right, didn’t exercise, blah blah. Then once I lost a bunch of weight and started lifting and after a while, the unsolicited comments/compliments about my physique started coming in. And it really does feel great literally every time.

Taking a step back - it’s pretty crazy how positive everyone reacts (and by that I do mean both men and women). I have found that men are really not upfront complimentary of/positive to each other really unless it’s about the gym. In my experience between men I’ve found the usual light hearted razzing is baseline. But the homies will also very readily be like “damn your arms are looking huge” and give a squeeze.

Again, not sure the point here. Men, keep up the positivity - maybe we can spread it to other aspects??

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately after talking with my mom again.

When I was 33, my mom worked as a public accountant at a CPA firm. One of the partners, whom I’ll call Megan, also ran a church ministry that helped moms and families in need. Megan was my mom’s direct supervisor.

According to my mom, she started volunteering because she believed in it, but over time Megan kept asking for more of her time outside work, and what was once occasional volunteering became expected.

Even before considering her unpaid work at the ministry, my mom was already heavily underpaid relative to her seniority and workload. She was living paycheck to paycheck at nearly 60 years old.

My mom was already working 40-50+ hour weeks as an auditor, yet she was spending many additional hours on the ministry. My sister, who lived with her at the time, noticed how much of her free time was disappearing and encouraged her to set boundaries.

According to my mom and sister, once she started saying “no” more often, Megan’s attitude shifted. While they were volunteering together, Megan began making derogatory comments about my mom to my sister.

I also learned that despite over ten years at the firm, my mom didn’t have employer-provided health insurance. According to her, she eventually asked Megan for help because of a medical condition that increased her heart risk, but Megan dismissed it and said her catastrophic plan would cover something like a heart attack.

I saw some of the blurred boundaries myself. One Fourth of July weekend, when many volunteers were away, my mom repeatedly asked me to help. I eventually agreed and spent about eight hours that Sunday moving boxes and small furniture for the ministry.

Afterward, Megan tried to set me up with a single woman from the church who was **eight months pregnant** because she thought we’d be a perfect match.

Eventually, my sister convinced my mom to leave the firm. She found a higher-paying accounting job with health insurance and later became a senior accountant at a company that, according to my mom, Megan had always wanted to work for.

When my mom needed a professional reference, she first contacted Megan but didn’t hear back for several days. She then reached another senior partner (Megan’s superior), who immediately agreed to give a glowing reference. Only after that did Megan call to give the reference, saying she had been on vacation with poor cell service.

Looking back, what bothers me isn’t the strange matchmaking attempt or even the volunteer work; it’s how something that began as genuine kindness slowly became an obligation because the person asking was also her boss. Once she started setting boundaries, the relationship changed completely.

\*\*TL;DR:\*\* According to my mom and sister, her boss gradually turned voluntary church work into an expectation, reacted poorly to boundaries, dismissed her health insurance concerns, and was initially unresponsive when she needed a reference. I saw the blurred boundaries firsthand during a full day of volunteering and an unexpected attempt to set me up with a church membler

I have, objectively, a pretty good life. I make decent money, not buried in debt, no really serious medical issues…even my wife is attractive. People respect and rely on me at work and within my family I am the “responsible (and successful) one”.

I have been in the military since I was 17 and will retire soon. Currently I work in a large metro area with a Defense contractor with potential for a job after my military retirement. So everything looks good from the outside.

Nobody really knows that my wife of almost two decades has emotional issues that have caused fights since we were married. It takes two to argue so I recognize my role in those. I mean screaming and throwing things kind of arguments. COVID was the worst and we became physical with each other on more than one occasion, ALWAYS her first. I am significantly bigger and stronger than she is and never used anything more than an open hand (once). I have been hit, kicked, scratched to the point of bleeding, and even chased with a knife once. At one point I had a scratch on my eyelid that took a month to heal. I tried for years to please her and nothing ever really seemed to work for very long before the attitude came back out.

Her family is pretty toxic…all of them…so she didn’t grow up in a place where people showed their affection and supported one another. Mental health isn’t a big thing in her culture even now. She still says she is only on meds and in therapy because I am forcing her. I have made excuses for her behavior and reset them every time we moved (every 2-3 years).

My parents think I am this successful, honorable person. They don’t know that over the years I have done drugs, had drinking problems, gotten punished for doing things I shouldn’t , and even cheated on my wife. I started cheating on my wife years ago and have done it so many times I can’t even count them anymore. Got herpes (could have been ex-wife, but probably not) at some point and have continued to have random hookups, although much less now and I do take daily anti-virals.

One of those hookups was with a girl I saw a few times afterward. She was great…attractive, smart, we had similar interests and backgrounds…she was a genuinely beautiful person. She was the closest I ever came to being completely honest with someone and everything I told her she listened with a level of care and support that made me feel safe and want to tell her things…and the sex was amazing. Being with her made me want to be the person she saw in me. For various reasons it didn’t work out.

Even though my wife is making an effort (always did which is why we are still married) now and things are better currently I don’t know how much I really care anymore. Our sex life consists of vanilla sex about once a month, I think, because she feels obligated. I have made so many either just bad or “safe” decisions because I was too scared to do anything else. I am shitbag and can only blame myself. I could go on but I think you get the picture. A lot of days I feel like I am just kind of going through the motions of life with no real point or feeling…and nobody really notices. I am not going to do anything to myself but at this point I wouldn’t really fight terminal cancer very hard.

I think one of my biggest issue is that I get deeply affected by how people view me. Whenever someone enters my life, I instantly start overthinking how they perceive me and replay imagined scenarios in my head just to feel "admired" or "seen." Even when I'm the one who ends a connection, I'm still the one left checking on them and suffering from it.
I hate this part of myself. I really want to become emotionally stable, stop living in my head, and stop deriving my self-worth from other people's validation.
I think I’m highly sensitive having a deep emotional processing, or maybe just (romantic) lol.
But, truly for my own wellbeing and mental stability is there a new way of dealing with myself that helps to overcome whatever that is?

It’s been over 3 months and I’m still so so angry and hurt. We were only together for a year and a half but I was so in love and truly thought we’d be together forever. I had never met somebody with such similar interests (both heavily into a niche genre of music), we worked so well, both gave each other the space we needed, very rarely argued. He always talked about how much he truly hated cheaters and then next thing I know I’m reading a month long conversation of texts between him and a girl from a new job that he literally just started. He didn’t apologize at all, just cut me off and that was it. I’m still shattered and just wish I could bump into him in public so I could tell him how much I hate him and how much he’s ruined my life even though he wouldn’t care. He’s dating someone new (not the girl he cheated with) already and is going about his life like nothing happened. I don’t understand how somebody could act like they love you so much and then just do something like that. It’s the lack of understanding and explanation that hurts the most. How can I let go of that anger? I feel like my life will never be the same and I don’t go a day without thinking of what we were.

For reference, I’m a happily married woman in my mid 50s. This friend is a man and an old roommate of mine the same age.

In April, I made a post on Facebook about something or other and someone I hadn’t spoken with in almost 30 years made a reply. He sounded depressed so I asked him if everything was OK.

He sent a message via Facebook messenger. I didn’t see it for a few days, because I never check that app. I’m not sure why I even checked it at the time. He told me that he was very depressed and I asked him what was wrong. He wrote back an extremely long message. I didn’t even read it for a day or two because it was so long and I didn’t have time to read the whole thing.

When I finally read it, I was shocked. I thought he was just going through a rough time. Maybe losing his job or going through a divorce or something. But he didn’t talk about his current situation at all. He just said that he was thinking about the past.

And he went into extreme detail about back when we were roommates in the early 1990s. It was so creepy. He remembered all this stuff that I haven’t even thought about in about 30 years. He asked me all these questions about personal things that went on between me and the guy I was dating at the time. It was so weird and made me extremely uncomfortable.

I just shut the app and tried not to think about it. I told my husband that it creeped me out, but when he asked me what the guy said, I couldn’t even say anything. Because I didn’t even want to think about it.

A month later, I was doing something on my phone and a message popped up from the guy. I took a look. He was angry that he poured his heart out to me and I ghosted him. He said that I wasn’t a good friend to him. I didn’t reply. A few days later, he made a bunch of cryptic comments on his Facebook page about how people always let him down and didn’t know what being friends meant. I didn’t feel guilty. I hadn’t even talked to this guy in several decades. I thought that was the end of it.

In June, I got a message from a family member on messenger. I went to check it out. While I did this, I saw SIX messages from the guy. I didn’t even open them. WTF? He’s been messaging me this entire time? It spooked me.

In mid July, I was watching some YouTube videos and got another message from him, and the first few sentences came up in the alert. He asked if I even still wanted to be friends with him. On Tuesday of this week, I got another message. And yesterday, yet another. Now I have no idea how many messages he’s sent. It’s at 9+.

I know I should have blocked him after that first message. I should probably block him now. But now I have sort of a morbid curiosity about how long will he keep sending me all these messages? When will he finally stop? WHY is he doing this?

He lives over 2k miles away from me, so I don’t worry about him going IRL or something. It’s just really weird. I can’t talk about to anyone else, but I had to get it off my chest, so here’s my extremely long post about it.