It's not getting better. Im falling sick everyday. Drowning in anxiety till i reach my breaking point and I'm heaving and crying again. Not to mention the feeling after waking up from sleep. I would never wish for this to happen to my worst enemy. It's just not getting better. Im losing hope

I’m sorry you liked my photo,
I’m sorry I liked you back,
I’m sorry I gave you my number,
I’m sorry we made plans to meet for the first time and I’m sorry we continued to get to know each other.

I’m sorry I told you I didn’t want to talk to anyone else and I’m sorry you agreed.
I’m sorry for all the times you called me beautiful, and I’m sorry for how you told me how much you wanted me.
I’m sorry I invited you to stay the night.
I’m sorry you asked me to be your girlfriend,

I’m sorry for bringing you to my house around my family.
I’m sorry you became someone I could rely on,
I’m sorry I unloaded my shit on you,
I’m sorry we spent so much time together and I’m sorry you told me you loved me for the first time on my birthday.

I’m sorry for your sweet words, and I’m sorry for your lack of action.
I’m sorry I got excited for our three months, and I’m sorry I thought we’d last longer.
I’m sorry you got busy. I’m sorry you left me hanging for two weeks.
I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t continue with me and I’m sorry you can’t give me what I need. 
I’m sorry you were my first, and I’m sorry you weren’t my last.

I thought I was doing well, then my ex called me out of the blue. It was not because she wanted to fix things but because of some other formal thing I had to take care of for her. Prior to that, I thought I was getting over her, but seeing that name on the screen pop up and the call come in made my heart race and my anxiety sky rocket. It showed me just how not over it I really am.

The problem is I really should be over it. Famously, it takes 2 to tango, but she was truly quite emotionally immature and unavailable. She treated me like dirt when we had conflict, and she was the most contemptuous person I have ever met, and basically kept doing that but insisted she loved me because she did things for me. Yet she would interrupt me, call my feelings bull shit and shut me down at every possible turn. She really was a child at the end of the day and was a very big reason we could not repair, and helped turn our relationship bitter. Then she told me I was the one who made her evil, and it was all my fault. As you can probably imagine, this makes me quite angry. As I never cheated, or did anything egregious, but some how I made her evil and the entire thing is MY fault “ i’m a nice loving person so you must have done something to make me do that to you”

I’ll never forget it…

All this and I STILL AM NOT OVER IT??? I need to know how to move on. How do you do it. I can’t believe I still love some one who treated me worse than a doormat, and felt justified in doing so

Its been a year or so since she left me, i think of her all the time, it used to be really bad but she still is on my mind. It is her birthday and for some reason my mind is telling me to text her. We haven’t talked in a year, i have no idea where she is, is she even in this country or not? I don’t know, I always want to talk to her, i wanna hear her voice but I think I cant. I just wanna hear her, the urges to text her and especially now it drives me crazy. I dont even know if her number works anymore, its IG which is private and thats all, i have nothing of her.

So my relationship ended pretty viciously, alot of shame projected on me. Luckily i had some good friends to analyse the situation and say it was not me, some throw the Narcissist and toxic words out there but I do not really want to do that, obviously I still care. My female pals were excellent with this. I am a male in his late 30s and I was with a Women in her mid 40s. 2 of them suggested this particular Attachment theory.

Though I am angry with her I still don't want to speak ill of her and move forward gracefully.

She did love my but said it a few times at the beginning. Then basically didn't happen. At the end of the break up she said "How did you not know I love you..."

And this is on me, at the very beginning she stated. "I don't really give compliments."

I am not really aware of these attachment styles. But I did notice some characteristics that my friends said were pretty standard

These are said without judgment. This is just what happened

Double standards. 

She would be at a festival hanging out with 5 random men at 5am while her friend is sleeping with one, for a whole holiday. Initially i was uncomfortable. But i did trust her. I called her out if I did this, she would be very angry, she just went silent

Trust issues. 

I spent alot of my time trying to prove trust, to the point I am realising I am doing all sorts while she makes no effort to lean in towards my direction, and you soon realise she is the one who needs to learn how to trust

No accountability.

A few scary things. She did not seem to see when she did wrong, she apologised once in our relationship after being pretty brutal to me. Only because her sister pointed it out to her. She saw it and then genuinely apologised to me. Once in a year. 

Zero communication

I understand the shut downs and distancing. But communication on hard subjects were just impossible. Leaving me to guess how to fix things, and even if she did give an answer... it was not actually correct.

I am by no means demonising her. Her childhood was brutal and I do understand these can be traits. But what are the relatable traits of an Fearful Avoident/disorganised attachment? 

“ Shake in Bake “

I got with a girl at a party it’s was my first, I get it it’s at a party so no big deal. This was almost a year ago and still don’t feel the best about it. Since then all I do is feel like somethings wrong with me. So what I did was change my life. I started the gym got strong and lost just over 15kg. I don’t like feeling like this every night just always seeing disgust in the mirror even though I have substantial progress I can see from photos. But this mindset and pain from the first rejection makes me to scared to ever try with other girls again. I want this to change as I like a girl but am far too scared to make myself feel as a joke and I don’t want to go through rejection again. As I feel it will take a big toll on my mental health again making me take more extreme measures in order to appreciate myself (not self harm) more like enhancements which I’ve done before.

Recently, I started dating this electrical engineer from USYD who I met through friends of friends. We both have similar interests as I study comp sci so we were able to hit it off and talk about interesting topics such as the Fast Fourier transform

Eventually, one thing lead to another and we planned a date together fishing. It was a great moment, we both had great deep conversations and he asked me if we want to start to label it as girlfriend / boyfriend. I said yes as I wanted to give him a chance and I was beginning to feel it.

This is when the situation goes south as he immediately started doing star jumps yelling "yipee" and told me he is so happy as he had a half-chubb the whole time. I was immediately taken aback as this was a massive change in personality and I was immediately creeped out. He then started talking about how the Australian constitution gave him the right to goon and out of respect he goons to it every night before he sleeps. He even offered to show me the flag he uses to polish his meat crayon. Needless to say, I immediately ran off from this creep.

I broke it off after I got home and he bombarded me saying he was confused as to what he had done wrong. I am pretty speechless as I think it is pretty obvious he as to what he done wrong but he seems genuinely confused. He said he was just paying respect to his nation. I am so confused as to how to break it up with this man as he seems to have polished his meat crayon a bit too much ...

I’d like to start this off by saying, don’t come over here commenting that i’m stupid and naive because of my age. I’m not asking for that. I genuinely want unbiased opinions please. I’m sorry if this is long, It’s such a complex situation. I narrowed it down to the best of my abilities.

I 18F and my partner 19NB have been together almost 3 years and I recently moved states to live together. For context, we’re in a 2 bedroom apartment with their sister in the other room. We broke up a few days ago, but we’re still living together. There was a lot of tears, and pacing the room, walking together and talking about it, and just so much emotional energy going into it. Before this we were long distance and broke the distance a little bit ago. During this time their sister has offered me her room because she’s barely home and doesn’t think it’s fair for me to have to leave knowing my at home situation.

They told me they’ve been struggling internally and feel lost in parts of themselves. It’s been twice now where they’ve told me about this cycle of thoughts they have where they get stuck in their head and have doubts about the relationship. Sometimes they feel like they’re keeping me trapped or that maybe they weren’t ready for this. They feel like they need to step back from the relationship, figure themselves out. Though everytime they try to go through with something like this, they always regret that decision too. Which is why they’re trying to be so serious about this.

My partner has a lot of unhealed trauma and I always suggest going to therapy and that it could help. Though they’ve told me that if they went that they’d only be going for me and they can’t do that. That they have to go for themselves. They’ve told me they think they may have just been ready to be out of a relationship, but they also genuinely don’t know what that means for their feelings toward me.

I asked them directly if they had fallen out of love with me. They thought about it and told me they genuinely don’t know. They said they can’t figure that out based on how overwhelmed and conflicted they feel right now. They know they have love for me, and we still tell each other “I love you,” say it when we say goodnight, and when one of us leaves the house. They still care about me a lot and don’t want me completely out of their life. At the end of the day they’re still my best friend. We haven’t been acting weird towards each other like i’m mean ways. We’ve been as mature and respectful as possible.

They’ve also said they hope that maybe one day we could find our way back to each other, but they aren’t promising that and have told me I shouldn’t have to wait for them. I’ve brought up my fear of us never being close again, they said they can’t be sure of anything right now, but that door is still cracked.

Until their sister’s room is ready we’ve still be in ours and sharing a bed but on different sides. As the days have gone on they realized they need stricter boundaries. We can still talk, hang out, joke around, eat together, and hug, but none of the romantic affection and we have to start building our lives around ourselves instead of each other.

The hard part is that I moved here from another state for this relationship. If I go home, I’ll lose my job and the life I was starting here, and I know I’ll still be heartbroken and miss them. If I stay, I have a job and a place to live, but I have to live with someone I love while knowing we’re not together. I’ve been asked if i’m sure that staying would be the right choice for me, and today I almost made the choice to go home. I’m trying to stick it out for at least a few weeks.

I think what’s eating at me is how okay they are with these boundaries, even though it’s eating at me. Despite that I still would like to try and make this situation work, because my family is so dysfunctional,and that’s one of the reasons why I made the move, to get away from them.
I don’t want to stay solely because I think they’ll come back. I know they might not and i’m not going to pretend that’s not a possibility. But I also don’t know if leaving immediately is something I’d regret, especially when I haven’t even tried living here independently of the relationship.

So what would you do? Would you stay and give yourself a few weeks to see if you can actually build a life here, or leave and be put in a bad situation?

And for anyone who’s been through something similar, did separation ever help you understand what you actually wanted, or did it just make the breakup more permanent? Am I stupid for trying?

Title in relation to your net worth and monthly income