toxic relationship

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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'

I’ve lived every possible failed romantic story, and I’ve heard countless ridiculous excuses for bad behaviour, trust me, but blaming a heavy piece of furniture because you said another person’s name is one I've never heard of before. I think it’s clear that something is off about this situation. The problem is, what can you do about it when YOU JUST FINISHED MOVING IN TOGETHER? How does one proceed?

25-year-old boyfriend accuses girlfriend of "making stories in her head" after he calls her another name: 'I don’t even know any Olivias. I’m exhausted from the move, it’s hot out, and I was carrying a heavy piece of furniture.'

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There is countless proof by now, the words that send you into the most painful rumination, and never-ending loopholes are the ambiguous ones, not the clean, blunt truths. One should be grateful every time somebody else grants us the honour of receiving something hurtful in its most beautiful package: a gentle, respectful, harsh reality.

A man is sent to a non-stop rumination loophole by his best friend for not telling him what he did to upset her: 'She refused to name anything specific I had said or done, and kept saying "It would be an argument"'

We all have that old friend from high school who was secretly our crush back then. They’re not in our lives anymore, aside from the yearly happy birthday message or some random like on a picture here and there. They’re just a happy, wholesome memory, about the first times we felt something for somebody else, floating on the internet.

28-year-old man refuses to stop messaging his highschool crush while he's in a long distance relationship with another woman: 'I am making him choose me or her'

In life, we're sometimes confronted with very difficult decisions, some about our career paths, some about our finances, and others about our love lives. It's a tale as old as time: the mean wife makes the husband decide between his friends and her. But in this case, I think the mean ones are the husband's friends, and the wife is not even bringing up the decision.

41-year-old man allowed his friends to pressure him into organizing a hiking trip without his wife: 'They have also made remarks implying that my husband should prioritize their trips over plans he has made with me'

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The healthy dynamic of friendship doesn’t come naturally for all of us. Some people relate to friends from a very demanding position, and some don’t demand anything at all and never let friends into their inner world. The world is filled with types of friendships, and just like it happens with love, it’s only a matter of finding the right fit.

26-year-old woman wonders how to successfully terminate a friendship after she got too demanding: 'Expecting to be chosen over other friends / my boyfriend, always needing to plan our next meet up asap'

ometimes, with friends, without realizing, we’re the ones always texting, always initiating, and always wanting to talk things out. Some people exit our lives with proper goodbyes, they list reasons why they don’t want to keep sharing their time with us, they blame the weather, their cat, or their busy schedules; other times, people vanish from our lives...

Woman wonders if a friendship is really worth keeping after she is forced to initiate every encounter or text exchange between them: 'I don’t think she’s lying to me but I’m finding it really hard to believe what she says when she’s then just so passive'