toxic relationship

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There’s a fine line between helping someone and enabling them. I’ve been in situations myself where friends of mine acted stingy with their stuff. In those cases, helping out wouldn’t have been a way to enable me, but I understand everybody draws the line in a different place. This woman seems puzzled about the way she acted towards a friend of hers.

31-year-old woman refuses to offer her spare bedroom to her friend who's being kicked out and becoming homeless: 'I do feel bad, however I don’t feel responsible to offer my spare room'

If you can't explain it to a Victorian child, it doesn't count I'm amazed by the quantity of stories that exist today that fifteen years ago would've been unthinkable, or at least absolutely dystopian. I remember watching the movie Her, and while I was crying, I was like, c'mon, this can't happen to anyone.

Woman cancels wedding two days before the event after finding out about fiancé's relationship with an AI model: 'He cried and said it doesnt count because shes not real'

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Oftentimes, we normalize the way we naturally act around friendship and never stop to think: Am I being a good enough friend? This is precisely what this Redditor started to do after she noticed most of her friends cancelled on her at the last minute. My take on the topic is that her friends doing that doesn’t necessarily mean she is a bad friend; it might even mean she has bad friends lol.

28-year-old woman wonders how can she become a better friend after all her friends cancel on her last minute and thinking her being a bad friend is causing that: 'I feel like I should be a better friend so people would actually want to spend time with me'

Nobody else but us can say what’s important for us in our friendships and in our lives. When we constantly feel somebody else doesn’t listen to us, it’s ok to listen to that feeling, but sometimes we get glimpses of something else that might be going on. It’s always ok to try to have an honest conversation with ourselves, or with a forum on the internet lol, and see whether we are exaggerating through our pretensions or not.

Guy constantly feels unheard and overriden over "little things" but refuses to be more direct when they happen: 'If I did the same things he did, to my own mother, she would get incredibly angry'

Big events have a way of bringing everything into light. Those days, when our feelings are exacerbated and expectations are high, old dynamics we’ve gotten so used to that we stopped noticing them show themselves again at full force. The resulting feeling is bittersweet; we see something clearly now- which is in itself a blessing, but what we see isn’t beautiful at all.

Bride abruptly ended a 10-year friendship with her maid of honour after what happened on her wedding day: 'Eventually I asked her for honesty and closure. What I got back shocked me.'

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31-year-old man ends a 10-year-old friendship after finding out he wasn't invited to his friend's wedding through a social media post: 'The wedding list was apparently "very constrained"'

To memories that cling We all have that friend who won’t let go. It’s borderline fascinating how, for some people, things that happened in high school are still relevant today. Relevant to the point that they would dedicate hours to ruminate about something somebody said ten years ago like it was yesterday.

'I think I might have ended my longest friendship of 30+ years': 45-year-old man reflects on the one thing that finally ended his friendship with his oldest, clingiest friend and wonders if he did the right thing

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30-year-old man thinks his 40-year-old girlfriend is delusional about her project to start medschool because she keeps failing or missing the exam to get in: 'It will just impact our future if she keeps believing in it'

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For some time now, I’ve realized that some things aren’t solved through talking. I know this is a rather controversial stance in times where everywhere we look, we are bombarded with the message that we should ‘talk things through’, that we should ‘go to therapy’, and that will be the solution to all our problems.

Woman asked for a "low maintenance" friendship but gets upsed when she is treated as such, leaving friend wondering if the low maintenance only applies for her: 'She also said bringing up friendship issues over text makes her anxious'

Imaginary friendship Is it just me, or is this a classic situation? I’ve been through this so many times. I hope I haven’t done this to anyone, but it always goes like this: you get together with someone once or maybe twice, and they start believing you are their best friend, but you are not there yet, and you might never be.

Man wonders how to gently decline woman's request to get together after years of her thinking they share a friendship that is actually non-existing: I’m also turned off by the way she declared in her email that ‘we should do this and do that together’

These days, some messages are becoming really hard to decode. We’ve increased the number of communication channels we use, and with them, we decreased the quality of our messages. Before, you had body language, tone of voice, and words to understand. Not all of those things are codified, but there are fewer ways through which you can get confused.

Woman can't decipher Gen-Z gym acquaintance's confusing behavior after she moves the friendship to outside the gym for the first time: 'She currently sends several reels everyday, but never engages with actual substance'

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Many couples go through a stage where attraction decreases; for some, this is just a stage, for others, it means the end is near. When children are involved, especially if they’re very small, responsibilities increase, routines emerge, and parents’ identities shift.

'You look like a mom': 33-year-old man says his wife changed after having kids and complains after she gets a haircut, leaving her questioning how to continue with the marriage succesfully

I highly recommend skipping the roommates phase if you can. The fantasy is wonderful, you get to live with a friend your age, and everything is fun and games, until it isn’t. With my experience, I’ve come to realize that when you get to know people through living together, you find the weirdest stuff about them.

24-year-old woman refuses to follow roomie's unfair guests policy and wonders whether she should bring it up or stay silent to keep the peace: 'She wants rules that only apply to me'

This boyfriend showed up where he shouldn’t have. God knows not every run-in is a good one, and this one was of the bad kind. Some people advise not to meddle in someone else’s affairs, and there might be a point to that, but sadly, not when it comes to your closest friends.

Woman bumps into friend's boyfriend at a restaurant having dinner with another girl and is confused about wether she should tell her friend or not: 'It's been about 3 weeks, I still haven't said anything and they seem totally normal from what I can tell'

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Those of us who were always very social have gotten used to the feeling of losing a friend; that specific kind of grief has become like a known path we can almost walk with our eyes closed. Culturally, we treat it as something different from grieving a romance, and in some points it is, but in others it’s just the same.

Woman wonders how to properly grieve a lost best friend while he is being active everywhere but the relationship: 'Today is the first day I stopped checking his online activity and socials'

The question this soon-to-be bride is asking sounds rhetorical, and I’m sure she will find that out sooner or later, and everyone will enjoy an amazing wedding celebration. In the meantime, we can discuss what makes her nervous and try to distinguish which part comes from the whole pre-wedding nervousness and which part comes from the actual issue being talked about.

Bride to be considers not making her lifelong best friend her maid of honour because she didn't defend her when coworker made nasty remarks about the wedding: 'I worry I’m overreacting and 20 years of friendship should outweigh this situation'