14-minute read.

average monthly nominal salaries and YoY change in Q1 2024

Yerevan +8% to ֏324K/$836
Syunik +7% to ֏295K/$760
Shirak +7% to ֏142K/$366
Yerevan had the highest wages. Syunik had the highest wages among provinces, while Shirak had the lowest.
REPORT: While the average nominal monthly salary does not always show the level of economic prosperity in a region, its rise has made a tangible difference in Syunik.
SUREN PARSYAN (economist): Syunik has higher wages and strong employment. It is the most prosperous province with the lowest unemployment rate in Armenia: 24% in Armenia, 15% in Yerevan, and 2% in Syunik.
REPORT: Over the last 5 years, the average monthly nominal salaries have risen by 40% while the inflation was 21%.
source,

Armenian army launches command staff exercises

They will exercise the practical implementation of deployment and combat plans, evaluate the commanders' skills, improve the synchronized work between various groups, develop the officers' moral characteristics and practical skills during preparation and combat operations, etc.
They will use automated control systems and modern technologies during the exercises.
source,

Armenia and India will form a new working group for defense cooperation

Defense ministries of AM and IN held a meeting on Tuesday. They discussed the 2024-2025 cooperation plan and the creation of a new working group to coordinate the cooperation.
source,

from PM Pashinyan's speech at Copenhagen Democracy Summit:

PASHINYAN: Democracy has indeed become a reality in Armenia. Before the 2018 Velvet Revolution, massive electoral frauds were the usual companion of elections in Armenia. There was no trust among the citizens that there was a real chance for them to elect the government.
Now the situation is totally different; citizens know that they are powerful enough to decide. The two general elections that were held in Armenia after the Velvet Revolution have been acknowledged as democratic, free, and competitive both by the Armenian society and the international community.
Armenia made huge progress in strengthening the democratic institutions, an achievement reflected in reputable democracy indexes:
(a) Now we are the 43rd in the Reporters Without Borders’ Freedom of Speech index, compared to 79th place in 2017.
(b) Categorized as having partially free internet in 2017 by Freedom House, now we enjoy the status of a country with free internet.
(c) In Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Armenia is now 62nd instead of 107th in 2017.
(d) In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index we are 84th compared to 111th in 2017.
In order to assess this progress, it's essential to note that alongside democratic reforms, Armenia has been contending with external security challenges: the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan's invasion of Armenia in 2021 and 2022 and the occupation of over 200 km² amid inaction by [Russia's] CSTO, the forced displacement of over 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, have cast doubts among Armenian citizens weather democracy is the right choice. So, democracy needs to prove its efficiency while dealing with security, economic and humanitarian challenges.
We are pleased with the deployment of EU monitoring mission alongside the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and we welcome EU’s decision to expand its capacity. On the other hand, we hope for the inclusion of Armenia into the European Peace Facility and in this regard, we rely on the support of all EU member states [Hungary].
A new set of commitments aimed at strengthening Armenia’s economic resilience, state institutions, and addressing the humanitarian needs of refugees has been taken on by the European Union and United States during the high-level meeting on April 5 in Brussels. The rapid and effective implementation of those commitments is of utmost importance.
Despite all the challenges, we believe that the real and most aspiring companion for democracy is lasting and sustainable peace. My government took the share of its responsibility for this. Recently we reached an agreement with Azerbaijan to launch the delimitation of our interstate borders on the basis of the Almaty Declaration of 1991. That means that during the delimitation we should simply reproduce the Soviet-era administrative borders. This is the implementation of the agreement reached in Prague in 2022. Now it is time to incorporate and reflect those agreements in the peace treaty and have it signed.
Another key point for our regional stability is the «Crossroads of Peace», project, initiated by my government. This project implies that Armenia and Azerbaijan restore and open transport and other communications in accordance with the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries through which they pass, and comply with the principles of equality and reciprocity. These elements of the concept were agreed upon during the July 2023 meeting with Ilham Aliyev and Charles Michel. //

... Politico reporter's Q&A with Pashinyan

REPORTER: [Ex-NATO leader] Anders Fogh Rasmussen called your neighbor an autocracy. You are in a very difficult geopolitical and geographical position. How do you solve the security problem in that environment?
PASHINYAN: I would not like to comment on the internal situation of our neighboring countries. Democracy fully corresponds to the mentality of our people. It is a strategy for our government, it is our political belief, it is also our political identity. The members of our political team have spent most of their lives fighting for democracy, the rule of law, and freedom of speech. Now we have the opportunity to realize all these values in our country.
The security situation was complicated because of the regional and global situation; the world order is collapsing at the moment. My assessment is, and I have had occasion to say this publicly, that the 2020 war was a prelude to further developments. And now the main issue is security.
What is our strategic point of view, how are we going to guarantee the security of our country? Recently, I gave a speech in our parliament, where I said that the most important tool for ensuring security is a foreign policy based on legitimacy. This is the reason why we so often speak about the 1991 Almaty Declaration.
It is very important that during the 2022 Prague meeting, two very important agreements were reached. Armenia and Azerbaijan recognize each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty on the basis of the Almaty Declaration and will use it as the basis for the border demarcation. This is the reason why I said that we are not drawing a new border, we just need to reproduce the existing one on the ground. This process is happening right now, and I hope that we will continue it steadfastly.
REPORTER: The border conflict that has occurred in recent years has had a negative impact on relations with Russia and Russia's role for Armenia. What would you say about this?
PASHINYAN: Armenia is a member of CSTO. We are officially a CSTO member, but I have announced that we have frozen our participation.
REPORTER: So are you still a member or...?
PASHINYAN: It is a matter for further discussion, but it is very important to record the current situation. A crisis arose in our relations after Azerbaijani troops invaded Armenia, and according to CSTO procedures, the Organization and its member states had to support Armenia in this situation. But even after the formal application, the CSTO refused to take any concrete steps, and in fact, that is the main reason for freezing our participation in the CSTO at all levels.
REPORTER: Do you expect the West to occupy the current vacuum and ensure your security?
PASHINYAN: We are diversifying our foreign relations in all spheres. Now we are developing defense cooperation with India, France, and other countries. We have a certain cooperation with the European Union because as I mentioned, we are happy about the deployment of the EU Civilian Observation Mission on the border. It is a civilian mission but in a way, it is a new factor for the security of our region. This is the first time that the European Union participates in the security agenda of Armenia.
REPORTER: Would you like to become an EU member?
PASHINYAN: We are waiting for the EU's decision to include Armenia in the European Peace Facility. We also hope to start visa liberalization negotiations, and last year I announced in the European Parliament that Armenia is ready to be as close to the European Union as the European Union deems it possible. This is our position.
REPORTER: Can you elaborate on what initiatives Armenia is taking in the fight against corruption?
PASHINYAN: We have made huge progress but have not eradicated corruption from Armenia. We must continue to be persistent in the agenda of democratic reforms. This is the reason why cooperation with the European Union is of utmost importance for us because today the European Union is our main partner in the implementation of our democratic reform agenda. We hope that the European Union, as well as the USA, will increase their support to Armenia in the implementation of democratic reforms, because, as I said, democracy is a strategy for us.
By the way, in 2019 we started a Strategic Dialogue with the USA, and today we see the strengthening of our cooperation with the European Union. We recently had a tripartite meeting with the participation of the USA, EU, and Armenia. It was an unprecedented format, where we adopted a huge agenda of institutional and economic reforms. It is also very important that we receive more tangible support from the EU and the US to address the humanitarian needs of the Nagorno Karabakh refugees because it is a very sensitive and emotional issue for us.
REPORTER: In which year would you like Armenia to become a member of the EU?
PASHINYAN: This year [as soon as possible]. //
Pashinyan met Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The latter emphasized the importance of the “Crossroads of Peace” project in the context of unblocking the regional infrastructure.
Pashinyan discussed various topics with the PM of Denmark. The latter accepted his invitation to visit Armenia.
full video, source, video, other, other, source, video,

former regime continues to hold protests and briefly shut down roads in Yerevan with demands for PM Pashinyan's resignation

ԳԼՈՒԽ 1
Dozens of participants were detained and released the same day for blocking roads. The detentions decreased from 170 on Monday to ~63 on Tuesday. They want Pashinyan to resign or to be impeached. The protest organizers visited universities to gather student supporters, some of whom joined them with a dance. The organizers also stopped by at a bakery where they were given free food.
A felony investigation was launched after a police vehicle, "with the sirens on", struck a reporter on the street. In another instance, an investigation was launched against a protester who brought a long sword. One other case was launched over alleged threats made on Facebook by a Galstanyan fan who wants scores of people to be beaten in dalans and exiled from Armenia, "մենակ էտ դեպքում էս սրբազան հողը կմաքրվի էս տեսակ շան ծնունդներից, ուրիշ ձև չկա!!!!"
ԳԼՈՒԽ 2
A ruling faction member of Yerevan City Council complained about "harassment" by opposition figures who are attempting to convince ruling party members to join the protests and the impeachment.
RULING MEMBER: That is not how it works. No one will join you with that conduct. People will join if they see you have a legitimate agenda with trustworthy leaders. Instead, you are "ethnically cleansing" the citizens of Armenia [referring to one opposition speaker telling non-Armenians to leave] և հեռու չէ են օրը երբ դուք գուցե ասեք որ հայ լինելու համար պետք է Հայկ նահապետից տեղեկանք բերել: //
ԳԼՈՒԽ 3
Yesterday the protest co-organizer Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan said he received a report suggesting that the Deputy Rector of Yerevan State University supposedly urged deans and others to retaliate against students who joined the protests. Galstanyan said he was unsure whether the report was true, but decided to read it out loud anyway. On Tuesday he rallied his supporters to the backyard of the University where he demanded to speak with the Deputy Rector for clarification.
The Deputy Rector went downstairs and greeted Galstanyan, who shook her hand but wouldn't let it go for an uncomfortably long period, prompting her to ask him to let go of her hand. The Deputy Rector declared that whatever Galstanyan read about her was a defamatory lie.
GALSTANYAN: I never believed it myself.
DEPUTY RECTOR: Then you should not have said out loud something you did not believe.
GALSTANYAN: Listen, there is a recorded fact...
DEPUTY RECTOR: Where is that "recorded fact"?
GALSTANYAN: It was on the media. As I said yesterday, I had no verification that it was true, which is why we came here to clarify it. If it's false, then I apologize.
DEPUTY RECTOR: Thank you. //
The Deputy Rector urged the protest organizers not to enter the building or disrupt the classes, and that "anyone who wants to follow you can follow you, anyone who wants to stay in classrooms should stay in classrooms".
The angry Deputy Rector left. Another university official criticized Galstanyan for not checking the information before reading it to his followers. Galstanyan said he stands behind his words, and that he was "just reading what was on the media", but reiterated that he had no intention to insult the Deputy Rector.
ԳԼՈՒԽ 4
Galstanyan and his supporters visited the monument dedicated to Operation Nemesis. He praised the figures behind Nemesis for "assuming personal responsibility". In front of the crowd, Galstanyan introduced Hambig Sassounian who recently joined his movement. He pointed to the Nemesis monument and said Sassounian is "one of the successors, one of the brightest people." In related news, on Sunday a ruling faction MP complained about receiving death threats with reference to Operation Nemesis.
ԳԼՈՒԽ 5
DANIEL IOANNESIAN (NGO chief): When this protest dies down, we need to discuss the following: (1) The transparency of political and media funding. There are some regulations in place, but they are incomplete and easily bypassed. For example, I'd like to know who paid for Archbishop Galstanyan's giant stage in Republic Square. In 2018 Pashinyan organized a fundraising for it and disclosed a detailed report. (2) Should the media organizations that do not respect the rules of financial transparency enjoy all the mechanisms for the protection of journalists? (3) Are the customs authorities confident that the church is not facilitating the business activities of certain figures disguised as donations? (4) Is it fair for the church and clergy members not to pay taxes? Should they be able to have a Bently and LX570 without paying taxes? [The "Bentley" is based on a true story.]
ԳԼՈՒԽ 6
Archbishop's fans spotted Miss Armenia 2003 and a H1 host Lusine Tovmasyan drinking a coffee at a Yerevan café and approached her.
PROTESTER: (unintelligable)
LUSINE: I was here drinking coffee yesterday, and a year before that.
PROTESTER: Why have you not joined the holy struggle?
LUSINE: Լավ եկեք թարգեք, շատ զզվելի ա, էնքան զզվելի ա․ //
ԳԼՈՒԽ 7
Pro-Kremlin propagandist Alexander Dugin praised the pro-Russian forces' protests in Armenia and criticized the pro-EU protests in Georgia.
Pro-Kremlin Russian politician Semyon Baghdasarov praised Archbishop Bagrat and the ongoing "uprising" in Armenia against the "traitor" [Nikol] who "rigged" the elections with the help of "Turkey, UK, and US". Nikol is a Turkish MI6 agent. video,
ԳԼՈՒԽ 8
Video of a protest recorded from above: video
source, video, video, video, video, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, video,

Armenian government has upgraded other diplomatic channels to reduce reliance on ARF's diaspora structures in the US, says pro-West NGO chief

KHURSHUDYAN: The status of the Armenian Ambassador to the U.S. [Lilith Makunts] has been significantly upgraded. I won't go into specifics because it's tied to our neighbors, but she plays an interesting role there. We have great conditions for the U.S. Congress to pressure Azerbaijan. This is outside of ARF's lobbyist groups in the U.S.
REPORTER: ARF Hay Dat's recent conduct has been shameful.
KHURSHUDYAN: And its influence on the Lemkin Institute was obvious. //
Yesterday Kurshudyan accused the Lemkin Institute of caving to ARF's pressure and meddling into Armenia's internal affairs to assist the protests by the pro-Russian former regime.
KHURSHUDYAN: Lemkin Institute accused Pashinyan's April 24 genocide remembrance day statement of containing "victim blaming". Lemkin did not comment on Pashinyan's statement for several weeks, waited 15 days, and as soon as these pro-Russian protests began in Armenia, they gave them a պաս:
source,

Armenia's four most prominent pro-West opposition parties announce the formation of a unified platform

Republic Party, led by ex-PM Aram Sargsyan.
Hanun Republic Party, led by Arman Babajanyan.
European Party of Armenia, led by Tigran Khzmalyan.
Christian-Democratic Party, led by Levon Shirinyan.
Have the following agenda...
(1) Promotion of Western values in Armenia and Armenia's membership in EU and NATO.
(2) United front against threats and risks of destabilization coming from Russia.
(3) Vetting judges to clean up the courts, and resolution of issues left unaddressed by the Pashinyan administration.
(4) Continuation of border demarcation based on 1991 Almaty.
(5) The use of international law to achieve a fair resolution for Nagorno-Karabakh residents.
The platform is open for like-minded forces to join.
source,

Armenian army chief denies being a Russian citizen

A statement released by the defense ministry denies media reports that CoGS LtGen Edward Asryan is a dual citizen of Russia. His wife is an ethnic Russian with Armenian citizenship and his kids are dual citizens, but Asryan only has citizenship in Armenia. The whole family has resided in Armenia since 2006, said the statement.
source,

Georgia passes controversial ‘foreign agents’ bill despite widespread opposition

The law will require organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence” or face crippling fines.
The bill will be sent to the President who is expected to veto it, but her veto is expected to be overruled by the parliamentary majority later.
Georgian PM Kobakhidze had an "honest conversation" with U.S. deputy foreign minister James O'Brien, telling him that the Georgian government is interested in deepening the partnership with the U.S., "which requires mutual efforts and relations based on fairness."
James O'Brien demanded to speak with the manager - Bidza Ivanishvili. The latter refused to meet O'Brien, saying he won't hold any meetings under "blackmail".
The White House said the U.S. will review its relations with Georgia if the bill becomes law.
source, source, source,

how many of the 101,000 Nagorno-Karabakh refugees have left Armenia and haven't returned yet?

As of...
Dec: 6.6K
Jan: 6.9K
Mar: 8.0K
Apr: 9.1K
May: 9.9K
The former Ombudsman of Nagorno-Karabakh said many of them have family members and friends in Russia who invite them to move.
source,

temperatures are rising rapidly in Armenia

REPORTER: The rainy May is not going to be enough to alleviate the negative consequences of the rapidly rising temperatures in Armenia. With a ~3 Celsius anomaly, Armenia had the second-highest increase in temperature over the last 6 months among a group of monitored countries.
WEATHER CENTER: High temperatures increase the evaporation of water and reduce the amount of snow in the winter. In December and January, we recorded rain instead of snow in certain mountainous regions, which is bad for water resources.
REPORTER: A conference was recently held in Yerevan within the framework of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
UN official: Around 40% of global soils are degraded. Millions of people will be forced to migrate from their communities by 2050 as a result of climate problems. Emergency action is needed to reduce the rate of rising temperatures. //
Armenia joined the Convention three decades ago and has assumed the responsibility to restore degraded soil by 2030. The government is promoting drip irrigation systems for farming and wants to plant more trees.
video,

is the decline of Lake Sevan levels finally slowing down?

see the YoY chart

Yerevan Municipality to receive a €25 million loan from European Investment Bank to raise energy efficiency

It's part of the implementation of Eastern Partnership programs. The Armenian government and the EU are co-financing it.
The goal is to raise energy efficiency and carry out seismic retrofitting in 6 medical clinics and 32 kindergartens run by the municipality. The length of the program is 4 years.
video, video,

Gagik Tsarukyan is inside you

there is a bit of Tsarukyan inside all of you
see it to believe it

Gagik Tsarukyan says the new Jesus statue is ready and will be installed by the end of 2025

It will be a tourist attraction site. There will be a ropeway. Also, Tsarukyan needs you to know that he is a man of God and an avid believer.
video,

Armenia and Slovakia discussed AM-EU visa liberalization

source,

Lithuania will help retrain Armenian law enforcement agents to combat cybercrime, analyze crimes, etc.

source,

Armenia's Economy Minister Papoyan met the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt

In a Washington meeting participated by the Armenian Ministry delegation and Armenia's Ambassador, they spoke about the Crossroads of Peace logistics project proposed by Armenia, several topics relating to Armenia's energy and economic security, and the Armenian government's ongoing efforts to classify Armenia as a "market economy".
source,

Armenia and Iran discussed the construction of a second bridge over the River Araks

The first bridge began operating in 1996. It came to replace the floating bridges on the river.
Iran says the AM-IR traffic through the Meghri checkpoint significantly increased last year. Coupled with the fact that Armenia is building a modern North-South highway, they believe it's necessary to have a second AM-IR bridge to handle the rising traffic.
The parties are currently discussing the formation of a working group consisting of experts to discuss the topic.
source,

a new study on mice indicates that more exercise might be better than more sleep for clearing brain of toxins

They injected a dye into a brain and tracked the speed of its movement during sleep and exercise.
The findings show that the clearance of the dye was reduced by 30% in sleeping mice compared with mice that were kept awake. This has not been confirmed on humans yet.
Previous research has suggested that sleep is important for preventing dementia as it is during this time that toxic proteins are cleared from the brain.
source, source,

I have two rescue kitties and I am having a hard time figuring out how much to be feeding them. The internet has a lot of mixed information on the topic and I'm wondering if I am doing something wrong? I have BMO who is the runt of her litter so she is pretty petite and I have Rhombus who is my big orange boy cat. Currently I have been feeding them half a 3oz can in the morning and half at night, which seems like it has been fine for BMO, however, my orange cat has a tendency to get into our trash cans and has been getting into human food and I'm wondering if I am under feeding him or if this is behavior he has picked up from being a rescue as he was pretty food insecure when we first got him. Just for some additional info I have been feeding them the Tiki cat after dark and they both seem to really enjoy it :) any advise would be appreciated!!

This one is vague and I am trusting the internet.
Could be on Tumblr, Ao3, EFP, gosh even Wattpad.
Chris evans x ofc or y/n can’t really remember. Maybe she had her own name.
Anyways, Dom!Chris Evans and she’s either bisexual or fruity in some way.
It’s long. Like multi chapter long.
Don’t really remember how it starts but she is some sort of biologist? Maybe zoologist? She had a research collector thingy in the middle of nowhere that she used to track either animals or the soil at a certain point.
The fic talks a lot about Chris’ social anxiety. I kinda remember that in the fic, Chris decides to accept the role of captain America and the two of them deal with the fame that comes with it. Her family was not nice or kinda homophobic if I remember correctly.
He is a super confident in his masculinity so I remember them playing with his back door but he’s kinda insecure about their private relationship (I think) cause i think they had a thing about threesomes for a while but he got super jealous when they involved maybe Tom hiddleston in one of them? And the girly had a bit of a crush on him?
I am actually kinda certain about the Tom Hiddleston thing cause I think that they used their Loki and Captain America costumes to have their way with her for her birthday or something (I love how random the stuff i remember about it is).
I remember Chris being jealous of Tom actually so that was a thing they had to deal with.
She may have had a somewhat colourful wedding dress? Or colourful hair?
There may have been a photos leak of them in intimate positions/bdsm attire. That created D R A M A.
Another aspect I definitely remember is that they had a thing about jelly beans. They got pregnant a few times and lost the babies and Chris started tattooing jelly beans on his pectoral (like where his heart should be) for the angel babies. This Whump was sad and tragic but a great story line.
I think this is it. Would love to find it. Thank you :)

Before I start this, I just want to answer some question I know I’ll probably have to answer later, or share some information that might be important.

1. I have gone no contact with him. (He tries to bait me into talking to him.) Only my friend group knows about the alcohol.
   
2. I know for a fact he drinks, I was with him once when he did it.
   
3. It’s not his parent’s fault, he sneaks it from open vodka bottles in their refrigerator.
   
4. I know he is drinking while underage, I plan to report him to the school counselor if he doesn’t seek help.
   
5. We’re both gay, though I do not like him like that in any way shape or form. He swears up and down he doesn’t like me like that either, but take that how you will.
   
6. He has allegedly been drinking since he was 7. I can neither confirm nor deny this.
   
7. He blames all of his problems on the alcohol.
   

I, 16m, was friends with another boy, 15m, for roughly 4 years. We used to call each other every day to play games. Every single day for 4 years. Everything was fine until I started hanging out with our other (mutual) friends.
After I started hanging out with other people, he began to get very jealous and bitter towards me and the friend I was talking to. He would act annoyed and upset whenever I would do things with my other friends, even though it’s the same things I would do with him. This is when the arguing began. He would make snarky comments toward me indirectly through his bio on either a game we play together or the app we use to text and call. He would always deny that it is about me, even if it was blatantly obvious. (For example, I used to give myself nicknames on the game we play together. He combined the starting letter of the 3 I've used and said something along the lines of “ABC gave me everything but real love.”)
We would argue like this and he would come to school like nothing happened and act friendly towards me, even if it was obvious that I didn’t want to act friendly with him. He would also frequently block me for absolutely no reason, and unblock me after a few hours. If I asked for a reason, he would get mad and change the subject. Of course, I got tired of this and blocked him back one day. To nobody’s surprise, the next day at school he was talking to me and making jokes like absolutely nothing happened.
One day, he even decided it would be a great idea to ignore me while I was sitting right next to him. I would talk to him, wave my hand in front of him to get his attention, and even tap his shoulder. No response. I obviously got fed up with him and let my friends know in a group chat that he isn’t in what was going on incase they were curious why either of us were annoyed. (This wasn't the best idea, I know, however he gets mad when I hang out or talk to them differently than I do with him so the most logical thing to do was to not let him know when I hang out or text with them.)
Before this next part, I have to go back a little bit. Because we would play games together, we would log into each other’s account to farm or grind for something the other wants. This lead to him knowing my password and email. Since he saw me typing on my phone, he saw the group chat that doesn’t have him in it. He took that as a sign that I was talking shit about him to our friends (I truly was not.) and decided to try and hack my account. Luckily, I’ve always used a secondary email on the games we play, so he only got my old account.
Not knowing that this happened, I forgave him for everything that he did prior. A few days later, at the end of school before I left, we were talking when he said the name of my secondary account. Of course, I asked how he knew about it, and he said he logged in. I obviously got very angry at him for this, as I had not given him permission whatsoever. I told him I would have showed him my messages had he just simply asked. This caused him to get angry at me for being angry at him. (He also got angry at me when he got the notifications that he had been removed from my email. I also changed my passwords, have no fear.)
After discussing this with our mutual friends, they confirmed that what he did was not okay. Because I was getting more distant from him, he thought that he should buddy up to someone else in our friend group. (He barely speaks to anyone else if he doesn’t have to.) Of course, he chose the one person that he supposedly hates based on past events. (Not my story to share, I apologize.)
(I don’t remember this part all too well so take it with a grain of salt.) After a while, I decided to give him another chance. We had a conversation where I brought up all of the issues I had with him in a few paragraphs. (Mainly stuff about boundaries and respecting me. Also for pulling my hair whenever he got the chance even though I told him multiple times on multiple occasions to stop.) His response was changing the subject to something different, and about me. I promptly him shut down, however, as he was bringing up stuff that I didn’t do, insisting that he at least acknowledges his problems instead of pretending everything is fine. This ultimately lead to him getting angry and ending the conversation with his signature “Okay. Bye.”
He then went back to pretending everything was normal with me, though he was talking shit about me in a group chat with our mutual online friends and one of our real life friends (The one he hated that I mentioned previously.) She would tell me everything he said about me, but she didn’t want to get involved so I couldn’t call him out for any of it. At this point, I was just tired of fighting, so I went with it. Many more minor arguments happened after this. I won’t include details for the sake of this post not being too unbearably long, since what happened was basically the previous fight over and over.
A while later, one of our friends called him out for his shit, as I had been letting them know what was going on for every argument we had. He got really heated over this, and told her to kill herself and that he never valued her as a friend. She gave no shits at all. He was promptly removed, or left on his own, from all of the group chats with her in them except our main server. They had each other blocked, though to nobody’s surprise that didn’t stop him from talking about her or to her in the server.
Though 2 out of 5 people in our friend group wanted nothing to do with him, that didn’t stop him from sitting with us and trying to joke around with us like nothing happened. For a while, everything was fine. I wasn’t talking to him, he wasn’t talking to me. Another fight happened between him and the friend he hated before, but that isn’t my story to tell either, sorry. The only thing I can say about the fight is that he mentioned his alcohol addiction.
One thing lead to another and I decided to give him one last chance. Again. So, I had another conversation with him, letting him know that im serious about unfriending him if he doesn’t talk to his therapist about the alcohol, jealousy, and obsession with me.
I gave him until the end of the week to talk to his therapist, or I’m gone. Everything was fine until the weekend. I went on a trip to Dollywood on the weekend, 4 of my friends being there. He of course did not come on the trip, as he isn’t in the school club that took us. I asked him on Sunday if he had talked to his therapist about anything yet, and he had said no. I rightfully blocked him, just as I said I would. He proceeded to play the victim and started asking our friends what he did wrong, pretending that I hadn’t told him anything about blocking him.
I unblocked him momentarily to send a message on why I did it. I told him blatantly that if he didn’t talk to his therapist I would block him, and he did not. I may have been a little harsh with my words, but keep in mind that I have given him many chances to grow and learn from his mistakes that he has not taken. He needs help, and I can’t help him. I wished him the best, but told him that the best is not something I am capable of giving him.
After I blocked him again, he edited one of his messages to “call me out” for not doing what he wanted. He claims that I should’ve just listened to his issues and tell him everything was fine instead of letting him know that what he’s doing is wrong. He doesn’t want help, he wants someone to ignore his problems. I told him that im not that person and im tired of pretending I am. He proceeded to make his bio things along the lines of “You never actually loved me” once more.
After his numerous attempts at getting me to talk to him by making his bio about me, I got fed up. I confronted him, letting him know that I don’t want to be friends with him, I don’t want anything to do with him, and that he needs to stop talking about me in his bio. He of course pretended his issues didn’t exist, instead telling me that he would get help for real this time. I let him know that he just admitted to not trying to get help the first time, and that in lying to me, he broke my trust in him.
Because I knew he wouldn’t try to get help, I blocked him after saying goodbye once more. This is when he started openly shit talking me and the friend that called him out one single time. He changed his bio to things about my body he knew I was insecure about, such as my forehead. While I admit that this wasn’t the best thing to do, I gave him a taste of his own medicine. He’s a bigger individual, and he’s told me that he’s insecure about his weight.
Again, I apologize for what I said to him, I was angry when I said it. He said I have a sixhead, so I retaliated with seventeen stomach and that he can’t be talking about me when he looks 5 years pregnant. I mean no hate to pregnant people, I was angry at him when I said it. I do not condone rudeness towards plus sized or pregnant individuals. Back to the story.
He made a post on a platform we all use about how he hates Taylor Swift fans, especially the blonde ones. (Ironic when he was talking about how he liked her a while ago. Also, the friend that called him out is blonde and a big Taylor Swift fan.) So, in retaliation, our other, OTHER friend commented the username to his twitter account where he actively reposts nsfw images of gay furries, often depicted as children. I was the only person that knew about it, since he reposted such images and showed them to me in class, to my discomfort. I am usually not one to air out dirty laundry like that, however he had done something similar to me a while back, and I honestly didn’t care how it would make him feel.
I took another page out of his book and edited my message since we had each other blocked, telling him to stop shit talking me in his bio, and that I wanted nothing to do with him. Since that happened, he hasn’t made his bio anything about me, instead changing it to some joke about being 5 years pregnant.
Nobody has told me that what I’ve done was wrong, I just would like to make sure that I’m not in the wrong here. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I can't tell you how often I hear people who I consider very intelligent spout the thoroughly disproven myth that the Earth's population is exploding, that we are all going to starve, run out of resources, etc... Before the internet, it was easy to buy into this narrative. Then as now, the idea of overpopulation has a racist tinge to it. "Those" people are having too many children (meaning the global poor, mostly non-caucasian). The message is clear, if the poor keep having so many babies they'll outcompete and replace us (this is a common theme for bigoted assholes).
Even a cursory examination of the statistics would show that birth rates around the world were already falling even in the early 2000's: https://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg?si=l0Uxa62wNxov1jgM
It was hypothesized that as people grew more wealthy (and I don't mean rich, just as they accumulated enough capital to be somewhat free from the cycle of poverty), they began to have less children, because fewer would die during childhood and labor had shifted from heavy agricultural work to less physically demanding jobs. A more modern twist, posited that skyrocketing costs for childcare, housing and education have contributed to this trend.
However, more recent data seems to upend this hypothesis, as a global contraction of birthrate is becoming apparent, even in countries that have not reached the level of financial security where one would predict that people would start to have less children: https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-dramatic-declines-global-fertility-rates-set-transform
Now, when births per woman are below 2.2 (replacement), the population will begin to decline. For a country with below replacement births, this means that the tax base shrinks as the average age of a citizen of that country increases. This will necessitate increased spending on elder care even as the number of people available to tax decreases. If monetary insecurity is truly a root cause of population decline, then this will only exacerbate the problem.
It's also a problem for capitalism, which is couched in ever increasing consumption. If the number of people available to consume decreases, the economy contracts as well. This is going to wreak havoc on the retirement system of the US especially, since we were sold to financiers by our government, replacing pensions with retirement investments in the stock market. Even if we still had a pension system, the number of people paying into it would decrease, limiting payouts. This is why I have always assumed the following:

1. Social Security will not be available when I retire.
2. The government is going to renege on the promises made to us regarding our personal retirement accounts (e.g. the tax free status is likely to go away).
3. The government may even take retirement funds from younger generations to pay for the boomers to retire thus continuing a recent trend of fucking over the young.

Seems like doom and gloom? Hardly. The fact that the linked article was reported on in the Wall Street Journal implies to me that the people who are most worried about this change are our would be corporate overlords. After all, if working age people are scarce, it will be harder to treat them like commodities and pay them subsistence wages (hence the recent obsession with AI and robotics). This will directly impact the bonuses executives receive, decimating the private jet, yacht, gated community and vacation house markets.
I think population decline will be the best thing that ever happened to us for one main reason: It is the only thing that can break us out of this current, hollow, exploitative, fiercely individualistic culture that is cheapening our lives and destroying the planet. We are going to have to think long and hard about what it is that we actually want, what makes a life a good life and how we can live responsibly.
I always noticed that in Star Trek: TNG, when the crew would visit other worlds, that the settlements were always quite spartan (for production cost reasons of course), and I thought this made total sense in world. These people had access to unlimited technology but used it to live simply and unobtrusively. This is what we need to do.
It's time to start planning how we are going to withdraw from the world and consolidate in smaller, better planned communities. This is going to mean allowing some towns and even cities to die, letting many simply return to nature, demolishing structures that could become unsafe and clearing out any waste that could contaminate the water or soil if left unattended.
It's also going to mean the end of infinite growth (at least until we get a foothold in space). Before the modern age, the rate of growth per year was something like 0.1%, often times there was no growth. THIS IS FINE! The captains of industry will bemoan the end of the world, but it will be the end of their world, not our World.
Of course, this contraction will also help in our fight with climate change (in the sense that less people consume fewer resources) but it might also make the more expensive options (large scale geoengineering) more difficult to fund. I'm also concerned that a contracting population will lose interest in space exploration and colonization which is, frankly, vital to our survival as a species in the long term.
So, I have mixed feeling about population decline, but for the most part, the future under decreasing consumption, contracting financial markets and fundamental societal reorganization sounds a hell of a lot better to me than a world of ever increasing consumption, corporate oligarchs with ever increasing control and resource wars on a scorching planet.
I'm hopeful we can arrive at the high tech low consumption society of my dreams, and judging by the failure of pro-natal programs to boost birth rates, regardless of generosity, this transition now seems inevitable.

I’ve been living in Gurgaon for a few years now. Had a good circle of friends when I was a teen in high school. But it has been 6 years now since I have graduated from high school. And with COIVD and all. I feel like my social skills have gotten rusty. Currently I’m preparing for an exam which will hopefully in the future get me a high paying job. And due to this, spend most of my time at home. I have been going to the gym for the past few months to work on my physique. And was hoping to join swimming lessons soon. But even at gym and these types of locations it often feels like people aren’t willing to socialise they just want to mind their own business. They appear crude and closed. And any attempt to socialise is shut down or brushed off.
I don’t even use Instagram, Snapchat and other social media apps designed to meet and converse with people since I’ve noticed I spend an exuberant amount of time on them and also seeing other people succeed and get ahead in life (even though it’s only either fake or selected data sharing) gives me insecurity. I feel fine when I’m off these platforms. But these platforms only make my mood worse and mess with my emotions. I can’t seem to control my usage. It’s either 4+ hours or nothing.
Due to a lack of any social media presence for 5 straight years, I’ve lost contact with any and all friends from high school, tuitions and other places.
The only one friend that I currently have who lives in my colony recommended me to get on these apps and download Discord, Bumble as well. And start messaging people over there. Text random people. Since that is how he made his current girlfriend and made dozens of friends from the opposite gender. His strategy was send Hi! to as many strangers as possible on Instagram. And then if anyone replies. Continue the conversation. And if not, then simply unsend the message. It’s a solid strategy I guess for someone who’s Vella and Berozgar and has a baap ka business. I have asked my friend to introduce me to his friends. But he keeps saying, akele nahi. If I also brought another friend. Then he might do it. Which is a valid request.
Is this truly the only method to meet people and make friends nowadays? I guess I can sort of understand how the veil of the Internet hides an individual and prevents them from danger and gives the illusion of safety. Also having a social media profile acts as a filter. Similar to how some corporate chooses individuals based on LinkedIn profiles. A good aesthetic profile passes the filter of many companies.
I guess yeah, how do you guys make new friends in your early to mid 20s? Is it impossible to do so without social media? I feel like my brain is starting to fry by being alone for so long. And I fear the longer I stay like this the worse the my health would get.
PS. I know this sub likes commenting a lot of jokes. But I’d appreciate if the comments only stick to giving genuine helpful advices.

Hello there! I'm new here :)
I always wanted to express my inner goth but as a kid it was pretty hard for me (no goth shops, no money, insecurities abt the way I could've look ect). Now I'm 26 with a work and I don't give a damn abt how people perceive me! :D so now I'm fulfilling my desire and embrace a more goth look. But there's a particular accessory I can't really match with the rest of my outfit.
And I'm talkin about the shoes. I really like vampire/gothic/romantic goth so I think a "delicate" kind of shoes would be perfect. But I also need shoes for everyday life as for going to the grocery stores or to work.
I'm actually using Mary Janes, I think they're pretty adorable and even if they're a little platform it's not a problem (I usually don't like platforms) but I would like to change shoes from time to time.
Unfortunately I really don't like the most used shoes: Buffalo, Demonia ect are just too much for me XD and I don't like how I look with pikes on... But these shoes seems to be the only ones suitable for a goth look according to people on the internet 😩
So what kind of shoes could I buy? Are there alternatives to the big, high and studded shoes? I would like to know more the type of shoes (I mean names like Mary Janes, Pikes, Chelsea ect) than brands. If I know the typology I can choose the brand then :D
Sorry for my broken English and thank you in advance ♥️

So Im a fairly new landlord (35M) got a good deal on a property with 4 units on after moving into a tent for four months to help save for it. Now we been here about three years the tenants I inherited from the sale where great but they sadly passed away on a car crash. So after spending more than I can afford on renovations the new family moves in. First they keep on wanting to change the Depost agreement we altered out agreement twice and then still they came and told us they will pay the last of the Deposit when the have the money as it is their money anyway and does not affect us. I was like ,the F*cK it does affect us, so I said no that's not how it works.
If you feel that works for you, then great but not for us and it does not put allot of confidence in you as a tenant if you already cant pay what you agreed to. So This was a whatsapp conversation I think I sent the last part as a voice note. Next I have the guy (45M) saying I will not talk to his wife like that yada yada I said how many times must I talk politely before butting my foot down? Anyway I was able to de escilate it and we went on our business as they then paid the agreed final depost.
Fastwordard a few months. The Toilet pipe of their unit and the small one below is block they are on the same septic. I and. my care taker ended up digging up and unblocking it but low be hold TAMPONS came out. So some one had been flushing and it cause the block.. I address the lady in the smaller unit but she was only there for like a week and the pipe had been blocked pretty bad. So I asked my wife to message the tenants and say the pipe is blocked do to tampons they must not flush those things down the loo. The lady replied "Oh Ok" and That made me think well it was clreary them..
We fixed everything up and cleaned up. Later that night the tenant came down to discuss using my internet that they also agreed and did not pay for so I disconnected them. I mention to him that we unblocked the pipes and it was tampons if it happens again it will be at the cost of you guys as Im not digging through that shit again. Anyway this guy looses it getting in my face "AM I SAYING it WAS THEM" and the more I tell the guy relax let me finish he goes own again you wont speak to me like that and accuse US. When I was saying I hey I had a shit day dining through your SHIT next time its on you and Im the asshole! How do I deal with this tenant Would you Renew?

I felt myself getting a little heated in today's CASA group discussions about "trauma." For every 10 times you'll hear that word, "resilience" will come up maybe once. I think most of us are aware of how arm-chairy and buzzworthy trauma and therapy have become. It's one of the latest cultural trends that facilitate a fluidity to presumed-more-informed conversation, without the practice of developing finer lines of understanding and distinction.
On the basis of your invocation of "trauma" you can rush to provide "help" and "services" and begin blaming an incredible amount of "mental health issues" or "unresolved childhoods." It's literally the cliche of a freshman's behavior after enrolling in their first college psychology course on blast. They've already invoked unsubstantiated pseudo-science and pop-culture explicitly not psychology as tools to provide frameworks for understanding your families. When someone infers substance abuse from a story just because the accusation was levied or any kind of drug was referenced at any level, their conclusions or assumptions go unchecked. It's predictably baking a recipe for an unnecessary mess on top of whatever the family is going through.
You can feel the tension every time you speak in "checking" ways. This happens to me routinely. One of the presenters spoke to the biased and incomplete ways that foster parents or aggravated family members might speak to the nature of the case or anyone's character. I pointed out that case managers can leave out details and massage stories to fit their ends as well. That got ignored and we moved right along. It's a real concern, and you need to know how to protect your relationship with someone who might be specifically directed to undermine your effort to advocate with the evidence.
But it doesn't feel "pleasant" or "decent" when you "want to believe the best" about your colleagues. Is it less true? Absolutely not. I was literally forced into that position from predatory supervisors and watched dipshit coworkers skip along those disingenuous lines without hesitation. Anecdotes fawning over better-inclined and capable FCMs do nothing to erase that.
So I started thinking about "discomfort" broadly. Another concept that's been wholesale abused. We needed to be way too on guard for what or whether we said might be a "micro aggression" or would cause someone to feel "unsafe" or "uncomfortable." Again, our pop psychology and propensity to overstate the noisiest out-ragers, made it so critical thinking and doubt became sinful in and of themselves. Facts don't matter in that space. "Being heard" is afforded only if you're claiming victimhood, but then, only victimhood of a certain type. The own-goal that is reactionary politics when you forgo any genuine attempt at taking someone's, almost certainly mostly irrational but nonetheless real, concern seriously is the ongoing consequence we get to suffer.
I think the more you practice observing conversational patterns, word choices, and trends, you can start to see previously "abstract" things considerably more acutely. One thing I notice is a propensity for "moving right along." I don't care what the topic is, there's a "normal" pace and pater that is preferred. Violate that, and it's time to move on. Point out the failings of the people you're supposed to trust most or even ingratiate yourself to? Let's move right along into the next module, as we all know there's nothing much more to say about that.
Another pattern I notice is the "taken aback pause." It's not precisely a reaction to being "offended," but it's a stark enough detail or way of relaying information that who you're speaking with was not prepared to engage that intensely. If they're quick, it'll be a brink-of-condescending acknowledgement before moving-right-along, or if they're not quick, it'll be a placating obfuscating of what you said to "even things out."Again, these are imprecise norms of conversational behavior around the particulars of one culture at one point in time, but they're real and of consequence whether or not you can see them.
When we use the word "bias," we let ourselves off the hook on the myriad ways it manifests. We let "bias" obscure in the opposite way that we let "trauma" obscure. Trauma is abused to over-explain what should be considered a necessary series of responses or consequences. Bias is abused to overlook how deeply it colors your propensity to engage that over-explaining behavior. You are biased, first and foremost, to your subjective experience of reality. In my experience, almost no one is that clued into their own flow of experience. Even the ones that are, or are showing the most growth and evidence, struggle, and will struggle indefinitely. This includes myself.
That's the point, though. You need the struggle to keep your wits about you. You need appropriate stressors against the things that will help you grow and incorporate. By definition, norms put that insistence to the side so we can all find a baseline mutual understanding to move right along down. The more cliched you sound, if you don't have a reflex to pause and pull back, the more you're training yourself to believe and act on "just whatever it is you say." You're a circular and totalitarian monster by default.
Add to that, you may not have any real ability or willingness to recognize how many cliches you truly are under the spell of. This is what the unironic attempts around discussions of "privilege" do a generally miserable job of explaining. We all have privileges up and down hierarchies and competencies and dozens of other metrics we fluidly transition through all day. None are necessarily going to jar you awake or indicate there's anything worth examining on their own. Your cohort speaks your language. Your education taught you the "right" things. Your hobbies and interests conform to a person of your state and stature. "It's just how things are done."
This provokes people's insecurity as a standing state of a lack of readiness. When you poke people, you'll find they don't have "real" reasons for their behavior, beliefs, or words. It's all been handed to them. They're a series of unconscious forces they're more or less molding to because that's how our brains work. Your brain doesn't care what it forms a pattern around, just that it can do so. There's survival reasons for this, as well as a story of basic capacities to function regardless of the nature of the environment that's all-but certain to otherwise kill you if you can't figure it out.
I, routinely, provoke that insecurity. I've learned to show considerably less ambivalence about the person after they've been provoked, but it happens just as an ongoing and predictable course of my practice. This is my practice. I analyze. I pull back. I try to identify and speak to patterns, even if they're abstract, but certainly concrete enough for me to anticipate them and work with or around them. I know what kind of response I need built into what I can reliably anticipate is going to be yours. I know how to piss off and get ignored by "the internet," and I know how to illicit a thousand likes. What's important to me is that I'm speaking as closely to my real perspective or agenda as possible, and not being driven by an elusive brain chemical game subject to the mercy of algorithms or inarticulate desires to unhealthily fit in.
I want to fit in, but with an ever-winnowing type of person. I want to be less-wrong in the information I share, but not at the expense of someone's capacity to hear it or learn from it if I can't be bothered to temper how I say it. I want to grow in my capacity to accept people, but not at the expense of their obligation to better account for and relay their own experience. I've been told my whole life that I'm not allowed to expect the same things from other people as I might of myself. I think this is fundamentally wrong and condescending. I think I should maintain the expectation while doing everything in my power to reduce the barriers to any one person getting to whatever heights you think I've managed or been born with.
Here again, we stay lost. How do you remove barriers you can't see or might even be dispositionally against even acknowledging can exist altogether? How many "boot straps" types can even be bothered to acknowledge the impact of the villages they're living in? How many "deeply empathic" people would entertain pairing their sensibilities to the word "toxic" under any circumstance? It's pretty easy, now, for me to see when my forthright manner acts as too blunt an instrument. Can you see where your baseline disposition and sympathies cloud your judgment and capacity to act more accountably?
I feel like "accountable" itself is poorly understood. Just count! Count the disquieting contradictory thought. Count the intensity, frequency, and severity of the feelings. Count the attempts to mitigate or times you recognized forgoing to do so. Accountability doesn't mean wildly wielding an axe to bring down dramatic consequences upon everything and everyone that wasn't noticed until now. It's just asking yourself, over and over again, what can I control about this situation? What can I act on that speaks to my values and perception?
Let's take the real world example of me and Byron. I can't control his perception of what he thought he was doing in service to the kid. I can't control his awareness of any creeping mental health issues that might have arisen. I can't control whether or not he responds affirmatively to my new boundaries. I could control telling him what those boundaries were altogether, so I did. I can affirm that I'm only going to communicate along the lines that hopefully help the boundary conditions get met before I'm willing to get more colloquial or back to friendly. I can respect that he told me our friendship is "invaluable." I can't truthfully say I think we'd be using that word in a mutually understood way until I see practical, tangible effects upon my life that counteract where I feel I am as a direct result of my expression of friendship getting grossly taken advantage of.
Until then, I'll treat him like I would any client. Show me. I'll patiently-enough nod along, provide whatever perspective or reframe that I can, and remain open to demonstrated behavior changes. I don't have to throw myself back into his fire. If I'm going to claim a desire to protect and maintain genuine friendships or care for those in my life, I'm not going to treat myself with the ambivalence I see others suffer from themselves every day.
I choose that level of discomfort. I only mildly complain today, as it's gotten dramatically better, about doing things alone and never having anyone to hang out with. Byron was my go-to spot for killing time or hanging out. Not once in my free time have I said, "You know, fuck my boundary, let's hang out there!" How could I look myself in the mirror? How could I advocate for you establishing better boundaries with people in your life? How could I ignore what I would characterize as gleeful and willful defiance of doing "better" than playing out battered-wife excuse making? I will not play-act friendship with someone who can't be bothered to work as hard on themselves or in service to me as I've been for them. That's not the kind of friend I am, so it's not the one I'll let back in lightly.
What's normal, though? No matter how bad someone fucks you, forgive and pretend to forget, right? They're "family." Life's too short. It is what it is. They didn't mean to or weren't aware. That's not who they were in the past. Holding grudges is unhealthy. Your insecurities around being isolated or alone betray you. Your obligation to play along and appease your mutual network takes over. Whether any real healing or mutual understanding comes into the equation is perfectly mute because we need to just move right along and "love each other."
I watch that dance justify literally every conceivable level of atrocity. It is the exact same self-servicing motivatedly ignorant pattern. From your god's behavior right on down through your secret satisfaction and smirk at punishing your pet a little too aggressively just that one time. What you don't account for counts on you to carry out its consequences. And you are, every day, in big and small ways, and it's predictable and fixable, but only with stuff like this. You have to own it. You have to "yes, and" like it's an improv class. You have to perpetually entertain the thought that you are a misguided monster, but that fact doesn't have to dictate your behavior going forward nor need to illicit some special amount of stress or talking in circles.
Then you might have a prayer of genuinely helping anything, because you see how you're otherwise fucking it up within yourself. You can resist the insistence to move past meaningful details. You can point to specific repeatable demonstrations of your values. You can see other people responding to your confidence of relatable recognizable capacity, and not the shadow game of peacocking virtue signaling and mantra echoing.
I will spend thousands of dollars, use all my tools, and spend every waking hour I have trying to help. I think most people I've met would say the same thing. Who is actually doing so? And in service to whom? Do you trust what drives them? Do you see equitable put in get out dynamics? Or is it codepedence? Or insecurity? Or some noble story of infinite sacrifice and unconditional love?
I'm willing to set the conditions because I expect better than what's normal of and for myself. Were circumstances reversed, I wouldn't treat you as I've been treated, and most importantly, have the demonstrated behavior from myself to trust. I've spent the time and money. I've opened the conversations. I've challenged the mismanaged powers and privileges. I've risen to the challenge of creating circumstances that inch me closer to what I actually want or think is better versus what's expected of me. It never ends. Every second you pretend otherwise, you disappear, and I have to fit your abstract abdication into my specific constructs.

This website is trying really hard to annoy it's users.
First it refuses to display the prices of vehicles, unless I sign in, which is actually against the law for advertising a vehicle in Australia. When I call them up, they immediately tell me to stop using an VPN. That's great if I was using one.. then they ask me to provide my IP address and they will "unblock me" how does this even work with dynamic IP addresses? I have no idea. This all has been reported to the ombudsman, but unfortunately I have not received a response in over 3 weeks. Surface to say, the government doesn't care, and only priority is self regulation for businesses which obviously does not work.
Now they decide to continually show me the cookie warning pop up every time I view the page or navigate to a new page on the website. They also like to do a 'are you human check' I am almost certain this does not happen with Chrome. WHIC AGAIN every business seem to TELL ME it's the only web browser that works or I should be using.
Xjsbdn
Why can't add block stop this! I don't care about cookies! Well I do, but I care for my insanity over a few privacy concerns. I HATE POP UPS AND WEBSITE OVERLAYS they RUIN the internet.
P.s Why can't Firefox provide a way to spoof the user agent so websites 'think' I am using Chrome.. and even better why can't Firefox provide a way to 'fake' the browser finger prints so a website does not know what operating system I use, or just use a generic one and screen size etc.. obviously this might brake some website, but an easy toggle on/off would be fine. Website get way to much information from their user. Information they most certainly do not strictly need.
Thanks for any input.

[Obvious spoilers for character romances, relationships, and a few character arcs. I don't recommend reading this post unless you've beaten the game.]
I’ll start off with the most obvious disclaimer: this post is not here to critique polyamory itself or its inclusion in the game. I’m all for adding the option to games (and BG3 as well) as long as it’s done respectfully and in a way that can make both monogamous and polyamorous players comfortable. This post will discuss what the game could have done better, why the characters they chose to make poly were poorly thought out, and what characters should have (hypothetically) been chosen instead. (The suggestions of who SHOULD have been chosen would give poly players MORE options, rather than less, while also maintaining character consistency and helping mono people feel comfortable too).
These suggestions are, of course, my own opinion coupled with a lot of threads I read all over the internet from three groups: monogamous players, poly players who liked what BG3 did, and poly players who felt it was handled poorly/felt uncomfortable with it. I myself didn’t care to go through the poly routes in the game but after I read some youtube comments on the Halsin topic, I got fully invested in the discussion and dove through youtube, reddit, and Larian threads to hear everyone’s opinions. As a monogamous person myself, it was interesting to hear thoughts from the poly players about what they felt uncomfortable with and how things should have been written instead. As a result, this thread is less my own thoughts and more a compilation of all the ideas/suggestions I saw people come up with.
The goal of this post is not to hate on the developers or people from either side of the debate, but to find a middle ground the developers could have used that would make both monogamous people and polyamorous people happy. The current game did appeal to some poly players, but it left a lot of other ones dissatisfied, and when half of your target audience is feeling skeptical about how you handled something, it’s good to take notice (and even though it’s too late for any changes to be made, it’s fun to talk about the hypotheticals and suggest what pitfalls could be avoided when developing future games).
This post will be formatted like so: (yes, I know it’s long but after having all the discussions and debates run through my head for a few days, it’s nice to get them all written down and out of my brain)

1. Important factors that should be considered when adding poly relationships to your game (in a way that makes at least the majority of your audience comfortable)
   
2. Which characters should have been chosen to be poly instead of the ones we got (and why)
   
3. Why the characters the developers chose to make poly weren’t ideal
   
4. Issues with how Halsin was presented
   

A few more points I want to emphasize before I start.

1. This post isn’t just focusing on the story and character motivations, but also on what makes the players feel at ease. You can’t make everyone happy, obviously, but there were a lot of mistakes BG3 made that could have been easily solved (with suggestions from both sides). I want to see games where both monogamous players and poly players can find the romance options they’re seeking without feeling ignored or pushed aside.
   
2. While it is easy to say, “It’s just a videogame. We shouldn’t worry about what the characters think because they’re fictional,” I say both yes and no. While the feelings of the characters shouldn’t be cared about (because they’re not real), the writers clearly wanted each character to have their own backstory, morals, opinions, and fears. I’d argue most of, if not all of the characters were written really well and in a realistic manner (as realistic as you can get with tadpoles in your brains and magical abilities). The writers WANTED us to take these characters seriously, as well as the portrayals of abuse that some of them represent, so it’s not surprising that lots of players analyze them. The fact that so many different people took the time to discuss the character romances and relationships is a testament to how well written the characters are. It’s okay to say the poly interactions felt ‘out of character’ and debate why.
   

​
Part 1. IMPORTANT FACTORS THAT NEED TO BE CONSIDERED WHEN ADDING POLY RELATIONSHIPS TO YOUR GAME (particularly when monogamous relationships are also part of the game). Most of these will be things other people have said, some of which I never even considered until they brought it up.
- Communication with the players
- Consent (particularly ‘enthusiastic consent’)
- Lying, pressure, and coercion
- Character backstories and potential trauma

1. Communication with the players

One of the biggest issues I had with BG3’s poly relationships is that the developers didn’t try to effectively communicate which options players had until Act 3 (when it’s too late to change your mind). A monogamous player could start a character romance, only to be disappointed in Act 3 when they find out the character is poly. Likewise, a poly player would assume someone is poly, then have that character change their mind halfway through. Now, in terms of narrative, this can be quite interesting, and in terms of real life, I’m sure this happens often. However, when you’re looking at it from a developer’s standpoint, it's not a good idea to do this. If you want to make players comfortable and satisfied with the romance options, you need to make it clear to them what they’re getting themselves into.
So, if you’ve written a poly character into your game, you need to let the players know. Once the topic of romance/sex is brought up, have that character confidently state their thoughts and expectations about it. This way mono players can go, “Oh, this type of relationship isn’t for me. I’ll try to romance someone else.” Meanwhile poly players can say, “This is what I’m looking for.” This way, neither party has to google which characters are or aren’t poly and risk spoiling important plot points for themselves. Likewise, if a character is monogamous, writers should do the same thing.
Two great poly examples are Act 1 Laezel and Dragon Age’s Zevran. As soon as the topic of relationships is brought up, they explain their stance on sex, relationships, expectations, and possible reasons for why they think the way they do. It’s done in a fairly natural manner and fits their character.
Of course, what makes this more difficult is a character like Astarion, whose entire personality is largely an act until he opens up in Act 2. This does make communication with the player harder, but an easy solution is: once he opens up about his true feelings, have him restate what he truly wants in a relationship. (Even that’s difficult for someone like him, who doesn’t know what he wants, but we’re looking at this from a hypothetical developer’s standpoint, not what we currently have.) Having him (subtly) express his expectations here leaves room for players to again say, “Oh, that’s not what I’m looking for. Let’s stay friends.” The devs should then leave some romance options open in Act 2 so players can reevaluate and choose someone else without getting locked out. (Again, this is obviously impossible to fix now. This should have been thought through in early development).
Consent (particularly enthusiastic consent)
One of the biggest issues I saw being brought up from poly players was the topic of consent, especially what they repeatedly prioritized: enthusiastic consent. The ideal response they’re looking for when talking to their partner is that their lover is wholly on board with the arrangement, comfortable expressing their true feelings, and doesn’t feel pressured to agree when they really don’t want to deep down. Out of the three BG3 poly options, only one of them (Shadowheart) had poly players feeling comfortable with her reaction to ‘opening up’ the relationship with Halsin (and even then, there were disagreements).
I can’t get too far into this discussion without bringing up my next point, so I’ll skip to it.
Lying, pressure, and coercion
This is the part that initially piqued my interest when reading that first youtube comment section. Many of the comments were poly people saying, “If my partner reacted to the Halsin arrangement the way Karlach and Astarion did, I would not go through with it.” Coupled with that were poly players saying, “I was hoping for enthusiastic consent and ethical poly. I was disappointed to find neither.” There were a lot of people disappointed with how the poly was written. One person even recommended it to their poly friends, then walked the recommendation back when they finished the game and felt the writers handled it carelessly.
Lots of people, both monogamous and poly, had their doubts about Karlach and Astarion’s reactions. Were they fully comfortable with the poly relationship or were they just saying what their lover wanted to hear? Were they scared of appearing weak and controlling so they pushed their own wishes down? Karlach literally says she’s not fine with it but will tolerate it because she loves you. Astarion’s true thoughts are more uncertain because he has a history of lying to make people happy and struggles with boundaries. I saw many people on the fence about both of them.
Now, in real life, there can obviously be nuance. You can spend hours discussing poly with your partner and checking in with them throughout the relationship to make sure they’re still on board. Some people may genuinely be fine with it but sound nervous at first. Others may NOT be fine with it and lie to avoid being abandoned.
The issue is that we’re addressing a video game where you CAN’T check in with your partner regularly and you only get 1 minute to gauge their reaction. That, coupled with their backstories and how the characters were written up to that point, is bound to make a lot of people (mono and poly) raise an eyebrow or feel uneasy.
While one can argue that leaving the poly relationships open ended/up to interpretation is an artistic choice or an attempt to add realism to the game, at the end of the day, you’re making a lot more people uncomfortable than you need to. There were plenty of poly players who just wanted to see healthy poly relationships with enthusiastic consent, and that’s it. They didn’t want to ask themselves if this was the right decision or if they were making their lover feel worse deep down. That’s something to address in reality, not fantasy. If the developers wanted to welcome poly players in, they should have done so in a way that makes them feel comfortable/satisfied.
This point will lead into WHO I think should have been poly instead but that’s for a little later in the post.
Character backstories and potential trauma
This is largely referring to Astarion but applies to Shadowheart and Karlach as well: If you are going to give characters a lot of layers, insecurities, fears, and trauma, you need to handle their relationships carefully. Not only are you building a character, but you’re letting players see their own traits reflected back at them. When it comes to abuse (physical or sexual), I personally think it’s important to consider player reactions to certain aspects of the game (especially those who have experienced abuse in their own lives).
I think Astarion’s sexual abuse and overcoming of trauma was well written (and a lot of people who experienced similar situations agreed). However, once the developers added poly into his story, I witnessed two prominent reactions from players:
- People defending it, saying that they were fine with poly relationships in their own lives despite going through abusive relationships (which is completely fine and valid).
- People who had the opposite experience, where they lied and said they were fine with poly to please their partners, then felt miserable throughout the relationships. (This is also fine and valid.) These players (even some who went through with the poly relationship in the game) came out feeling uncomfortable and reminded of their pasts.
The ambiguity the developers went for just made this whole situation worse, as it led to arguments and disagreements in the community, with some people insisting the brothel scene helps Astarion heal, while many believed it had the opposite effect. The same arguments were made regarding the Halsin relationship.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with writing a story and sticking to it regardless of how uncomfortable it makes people feel, but in this case, there were so many other options besides Astarion you could have chosen. I think in the long run, it’s better to leave his character away from poly to avoid making lots of people (including SA victims) uneasy when it’s an optional feature anyway. (No one would have complained if he said a simple “that’s not what I’m looking for” or “I’m not comfortable sharing” and left it at that.)
(I’ll go more into more detail about Astarion, Karlach, and Shadowheart later, but will move on for now.)
​

1. WHICH CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO BE POLY INSTEAD OF THE ONES WE GOT (AND WHY)

Now, just because I recommend removing poly options from certain characters doesn’t mean it should be omitted entirely. I just think there were far better options available to the developers (character wise, story wise, and player expectation wise). I agree with the online sentiment that instead of taking a step back and figuring out which characters worked best for poly, the developers instead chose the most popular male and female characters and called it a day without discussing whether or not these were the ideal options.
As I was reading through everyone’s complaints and critiques of the poly implementation, I took a moment to figure out which characters would fit it best. I took several factors into account.
You need a character who poly players are confident their yes means yes and no means no (meaning they need to be a generally honest and forthright person). It’s not a good idea to have sexual trauma or a past of people pleasing/coercion because while not all SA victims are monogamous by any means, because it’s a video game and not real life, this opens the door to a lot of other issues and can leave poly players unsure if the character’s past influenced their ability to say yes or no. This is especially relevant because the game only takes place over 4 months. Not only are the romantic relationships just beginning, but Karlach and Astarion literally killed their abusers a few days ago. The pain is still fresh and a lot of healing needs to be done. It’s better to leave the sexual content away from them for now (and if poly players want to imagine the characters opening up the relationship later, they can. It just shouldn’t happen in the current game.)
With those factors in mind, I started narrowing down the characters to figure out which ones would suit the criteria.
Ones that AREN’T a perfect fit:
Astarion: two hundred years of sexual abuse (which is a lot to recover from), he just regained his bodily autonomy, he is a habitual liar, he can be talked into doing things he hates and only protests after the deed is done, even after Cazador dies in Act 3 he will do things he doesn’t want to in order to appease the player, killing one’s abuser does not magically fix all the internal issues and insecurities, the list goes on.
Gale: His issues aren’t as obvious or prominent but he also has a history of people pleasing and doing things he doesn’t want to simply to make his partner happy (see Mystra and the brothel scene).
Karlach: While she is pretty chill about the brothel, the most prominent problem this game has is that she’s literally dying. Even if she was open to poly, as someone pointed out, any loving partner would dedicate what little time they have left to focusing on her.
Shadowheart: This one has the most discussions around it because the writing is inconsistent. This is also the only romance I personally haven’t gone through so I can’t get into full details. However, what I have seen discussed is: brainwashing and memory wipes, being forced to be a “honeypot” against her will, she links her love of poly back to the cult that she spent the whole game trying to escape, her personality does a fairly sudden 180 when poly is brought up. This specific case is more of a “the poly aspect makes the writing feel inconsistent” but the issues of her cult and coercion are also very important.
That leads into characters who ARE a better fit (and bear in mind that this would require rewrites and other stuff that would have had to happen in earlier stages of development, though the tweaks would honestly be minimal):
Minthara: She may have insecurities about the Absolute and choosing her own path, but she is never insecure when dealing with romance. She knows what she wants and how to get it. While I adore her “lay a finger on them, and I’ll cut you” dialogue in the brothel, no one would have been surprised if she was written as poly. It fits her character and if she says, “Go right on with Halsin,” we all know she means it. You could honestly take Ascended Astarion’s Halsin dialogue and paste it into hers instead. The “you are mine” line would make more sense for her than him.
Laezel: This is the most obvious one. She is not only confident in her relationships and sexual preferences, but she also comes from a poly society. Like Minthara, she knows what she wants and will refuse if she doesn’t agree with something. Again, while I love her romance shifting from only wanting casual sex to becoming strictly monogamous, no one would have been surprised if she remained consistent throughout instead.
Halsin: He doesn’t have a history of lying, he knows what he wants, and he is supposed to be one of the more mature members of the group. While I think his writing itself was handled poorly (I dedicate a whole section to that at the end), he’s still a fine option for poly. My only change would be that they make his preferences very obvious in Act 1 and or 2. I saw lots of Halsin fans being super disappointed when they found out he wasn’t willing to be monogamous (and again, you don’t learn this until sixty hours in, so you’ve not only missed out on all the other romances but you can’t just go back and remedy that easily). His talk about the drow kidnapping in the brothel is questionable but that’s easy enough to omit (I saw a lot of people wondering why it was added at all. While Astarion’s trauma was carefully implemented, many felt Halsin’s was carelessly tacked on and almost fetishized.)
This final one is tricky. We know the developers wanted a male option but it’s hard when both Wyll and Gale are written as strictly monogamous. However, going by my criteria from before and therefore omitting Gale and Astarion for aforementioned issues, that leaves us only one option (and it makes sense the more I think about it).
Wyll: Like the other three, Wyll doesn’t lie to spare people’s feelings. He knows what he wants, he accepts his decisions (even the Mizora one), and he is always down to have an open discussion about anything. The only thing holding him back from poly narratively is his nobility and wish to be traditional. Just like the others, I personally like this trait, but since we’re speaking in “what if’s” we can ignore that. It’s easy enough to tweak his story to him being more open to try new things (especially because in most endings, he doesn’t end up becoming a noble anyway). I did see a few people mention that making Wyll the poly option instead of Astarion would have made him more interesting and layered as well.
Of course, these implementations would have to be coupled with them being truthful/open about their poly traits from the beginning of the game, as mentioned before.
This lineup also fixes another problem people had: the current BG3 poly options completely cut off lesbians and straight men. Only bisexuals, straight women, or gay men can have a poly relationship in the game.
What I propose (or at least pretend to since no real changes will be made) is that Halsin and Minthara are the ones who suggest the poly thing (or more ideally, it’s a dialogue option for the PLAYER to choose, since many poly people said it’s weird to insert yourself into a couple rather than having the couple proposition you). This way the options can expand. You now have
Minthara and Laezel
Minthara and Wyll
Halsin and Laezel
Halsin and Wyll
I stumbled upon some threads in this rabbit hole where people were initially debating who they thought would be poly (before the game officially came out). The three most prominent answers were: Minthara, Laezel, and Astarion (though I should clarify that at this point, most players assumed Astarion’s hedonistic playboy persona was real and not an act). On the other hand, once the poly options were fully available and explored, most people were surprised (in a negative way) that Astarion, Shadowheart, and Karlach had been chosen. They felt that poly had been slapped on to sell more games, rather than carefully implemented to fit the story.
Now that I’ve established the alternative I believe should have happened, I can expand a little more on why what we got wasn’t satisfactory. (I’d like to add a note that I personally romanced Astarion the most, Karlach once, and Shadowheart never, so the evidence I go over will heavily lean to one side, unfortunately. There are other redditors who get into the Shadowheart debate in more detail than I could. I can link these below if anyone bothers to read this far and wants to see them.)
​

1. WHY THE CHARACTERS THE DEVELOPERS CHOSE TO MAKE POLY WEREN’T IDEAL

Karlach:
This is the most simple of the three. On the surface, I initially thought she would be a good idea for poly. She lets you sleep with the prostitutes in the brothel, she’s pretty blatant about her wants and needs, she’s touch starved, and she initially seems like she’d be fine with Halsin.
But there are two issues:
One, in the Halsin proposition dialogue, she outright states that she isn’t really cool with a poly relationship. (She says something along the lines of, “I’ll have to chew on that for a while. I’m not sure I want this right now and don’t think I ever will.”) So she’s very blatant in telling you that this isn’t what she wants, but she’ll tolerate it because she loves you. It’s easy to see why this would make poly people feel bad and wish for an alternative.
Now, this could be fixed by changing her dialogue to being super enthusiastic, but even if you did, you get problem two: She is dying. She has weeks left to live. You the player spend most of your day fighting enemies so you only have a few hours left to spend with your lover. No kind hearted partner, poly or otherwise, would waste those precious hours on a casual relationship with Halsin when they should be focusing entirely on Karlach. Halsin will still be around at the end of the game. To the player’s knowledge, Karlach won’t.
If she wasn’t dying, I would list her as a possible poly option. But because she only has a few weeks to live, she just can’t be. Her existence as one of the three poly options was what cemented the theory (in my mind) that the developers chose the most popular romance options, rather than the ideal ones.
Shadowheart:
Again, this was the one that some skeptical poly people said felt the most right in terms of presentation. She is enthusiastic about Halsin and the twins, she participates, and if you were to pick the most likely to be cool with it, she wins.
However, there are still a lot of issues with this choice (in terms of backstory, insecurities, reasons for poly, and treatment of monogamous players). Again, please bear in mind that this is the one romance I myself didn’t do so some facts may be off or vague.
Backstory: Her entire life up to this point has been erased. She was forced to do horrific things against her will (abusing her parents, being abused herself, torturing others, seducing people). She puts up a constant act of loving torture and being evil, but as you play through the game, you realize she doesn’t actually like harming people and she seeks genuine connections and love despite claiming she doesn’t. I didn’t fully appreciate her until I did an evil Dark Urge run because while my psychotic monk, dictator Minthara, and Ascended Astarion were killing people left and right, she continued to disapprove of our evil actions despite “choosing” Shar in the end. To a lesser extent than Astarion, she does lie to the player about her wishes and intentions, which is one of the criteria I went into earlier.
Insecurities: I didn’t see this myself but I read plenty of threads about how her confidence is also an act. She is one of the only characters to continually ask the player if their relationship is still ongoing and if they’re happy with her. Her dialogue throughout the romance seems to be leading to her preferring monogamy and complete loyalty, so it feels out of character when she suddenly switches at the end of her arc. (Can real life people do this? Sure. Is it a very strange and sometimes off-putting writing choice? Yes, especially because there are very few hints (if any) of her being poly throughout the romance.) This also links into my ‘communicating that a character is poly to the player’ problem from earlier.
Reasons for poly: This is what I personally had the most issue with. If you cheat on her with Mizora, she explains that she’s fine with poly and/or open relationships and asks that you communicate with her first. Fine. No issues there. The problem arises when she explains WHY she’s fine with open relationships. It’s because Lady Shar encouraged it in the cult she grew up in. You know, the cult that abused her and brainwashed her for years. The one she spent the entire game trying to escape. She continually tries to distance herself from both Shar and the practices she encouraged. She expresses disgust in the Act 3 section when talking about how she had to torture and seduce people. She could choose to be poly for herself after the fact, but players are allowed to be a little concerned that her main reason for being poly is directly a result of her abusive goddess’s teachings.
Similar to Astarion, it is possible for someone in Shadowheart’s position to be poly in real life. Everyone is different and reacts to things differently. However, from a writer and developer standpoint, it’s better to just leave her monogamous and avoid all these pitfalls. As we saw, even with her enthusiastic consent to Halsin and the twins, her backstory and character arc up to that point still left people doubtful and uncomfortable. Again, since there are much better options for poly characters, why choose Shadowheart?
My final point for Shadowheart was about how it treated monogamous players. This personally irked me and I feel like it was the worst way to introduce poly because it actively antagonizes monogamous players and ruins the experience for them. (Thankfully Karlach and Astarion’s poly romances didn’t seem to have this issue to such an obvious extent).
I’ll summarize what people experienced when romancing Shadowheart. In Act 3, Halsin asks you to start a poly relationship with Shadowheart. If you tell him, “No, I’m not interested” he says that’s fine and will move on. No problem there. The issue arises if you keep him in your party. Despite you rejecting him, he will proceed to flirt with Shadowheart instead, which makes him seem pushy and creepy (which you don’t want as a writer unless it’s intentional). This made things particularly uncomfortable for lesbian players, though I completely understand how it would make ANY monogamous player annoyed, regardless of gender or preference. What makes it worse is that Shadowheart will then flirt back with him. The game ignores any preferences or input from the player here and they can’t respond to it. This bothered me, since the game up to that point seemed to at least respect the fact that mono players exist and want to have a romance that suits them.
But you could argue it was just a bug/forgetting to flag dialogue correctly. I could accept that, until you take both Shadowheart and Halsin to the brothel. Not only will Halsin invite himself in a third time after being rejected, but Shadowheart will say she’s dreamed of having sex with him before the player can even accept or reject Halsin’s suggestion. Most people would rightfully get angry when their romantic partner mentions wanting to sleep with one of their friends. From a writer’s standpoint, this is just disrespectful to the player’s choices and has zero reason to be this way. I’m not sure how such a mistake was made and why it hasn’t been rectified, but I’m disappointed that they didn’t at least lock that section behind the poly romance. It’s a fine scene if you HAVE agreed to date Halsin, but the existence of poly relationships shouldn’t completely ruin the experience for monogamous players. The writers should have tried to view these interactions from both perspectives, rather than simply one side or the other. And again, because the writers failed to communicate Shadowheart’s preferences early on, no one encountered this until they were three acts in and invested.
[There's a character limit so I'll have to do a part 2 to finish the Astarion points and discuss Halsin.]

So, English is not my first language even though I had studied it for years now, so, any grammatical error, please be excused. I also want to point out a few things up, this story is LONG, as it says on the title, we’ve been together for almost a decade, so there’s a lot of things to patch up, also, I’m not trying to paint him as the bad guy nor myself as the good guy, just trying to let it all out because there’s some details I cannot say to everyone I know, so it’s better for me to just talk about it with internet strangers, also, I don’t know if this place has a limit of characters, so if it has, it’s going to be some parts long.
So, to start this, I (27 F), broke things with my bf (26 M) Alan (Not his real name) after we’ve been together for little less than a decade because I was just so fed up with everything we lived together, not having the strength to even try and give this another go as he wanted us to. A year before meeting him on my last school year I was s*xually Ass*ulted by a man that I met on a park where I used to go dancing, not only that, but he made me believe that I was okay with what happened (I was sixteen and he was 21, here the age of consent is not until the 18th mark), he made me believed that I liked it, and made me believe that no one would ever believe me if I ever decided to report it, so I didn’t, but obviously it got me a pretty bad scar.
I met Alan one year later, his friend group was friends with my friend group, so in school we kinda merged together and he was a good guy, a great guy even, he always had something nice to say about me and he never blamed me for being scared of a group of people so anytime I wanted to buy something on the school market, he did it for me until he tried to make me come across my fear and was just behind me as I was approaching the big group gather on the market trying to make me feel confident enough to buy things by myself, after that we became closer and closer until one day I went with my friend group to recess with his friend group, but he wasn’t there, I asked one of his friends and he told me that he wasn’t feeling right and was still on the classroom, so off I went and looked up for him, we talked for a while and then he thank me for listening to him and not bug him with the “guys don’t cry”, that made us even more close to eachother and we started something, not a relationship, but a situationship from mid July to late November, when I graduated from school (He had one more year to go), on my celebration date, he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes, I made him meet my family shortly after and I met his.
He was a part-time gamer, and the first straw was that he believed that I would made him choose between his games or me, but no, I didn’t, even so, I asked him to teach me how to play so we could play together, I was not good, at all, but I was just glad to be on his hobbies, little did I know that would be one of the reasons I broke things off. We had fights and arguments because he was a competitive type of guy on this online games and, because I was bad at them, we usually lost games because of me, it took us a lot of work to find a solution, he had to put down some bars, because it was not healthy, also the first “or else” that he made me aware of, was when I told him that I needed him to express his emotions to me, but he took it as “Show emotions or I’m leaving you” which wasn’t the case, but worked up just fine.
Some years passed and… You remember what I told you about the year before meeting Alan? Well, we couldn’t get intimate in that way and I had to sit him and explained what happened, he was supportive and we didn’t do it after our four year mark, but again, he wasn’t as supportive as I recall, he usually push over it and only stopped moments before I got a flashback of what happened. But that one time that we did it, I remember it well, I started crying out of emotion because I finally overcame my fear, but after we finished, he stood up, we cleaned ourselves and he made me get ready because he didn’t want to be late to a friend’s birthday. Speaking of intimacy, he had a really big drive and I didn’t, but every time I tried to say “no”, he got all frustrated so I started initiating moments after I saw him like that so I could brush that feeling off of him, our intimacy was like that until just months before our breakup.
Now into another thing, I have always work, even when I was still at school, I’ve always worked to get my things, I’m not good at saving money, but I work my butt off, so when he started to gain interest on a particular expensive game, we usually used his mother credit card and the one paying it was me, he said that when he worked he bought things for us, but… This is the thing about it… He only worked 5-6 months in all of our relationship, sure, he went with his father some times to do some work, but he didn’t even saw that money because it went directly to a gaming console for himself, so in years that we’ve been together, he worked 5-6 months and the rest was payed from myself and he still took his time working as a sort of argument against me.
Now, one time, when I was on the university, a random classmate just suddenly kissed me and I was in shock, so in shock that I didn’t kissed him back, nor could I stop him, but when he went for a second one, I backed out and I went to my boyfriend crying because I thought I was cheating on him because someone kissed me and I explained every detail to him, but the guy dropped off from college, so I never saw him again and then, another day, I was in the subway and encounter my ex boyfriend while he was, actually, coming back home after his own studies, I ignored him for the most part, but he actually asked politely to let him talk to me, so we went to a public park and he actually just wanted to say sorry because he cheated on me with his ex girlfriend while he was with me, we didn’t do anything besides me listening to him and giving him the closure he was searching for, we did not stay in contact, I just said to him that it was not something that I keep on mind to this day, but if it made him feel better, I would accept his apology and then we parted ways, everything I did and said I made my boyfriend aware of and he was such in a panic that one of his friends actually went to his house and they talked shit about me because I dared to let my ex ask for my forgiveness. Those are the only two time that I recall I made him feel insecure, two times and that’s it and he wasn’t letting any of those things go any time we got into an argument.
I remember one time we actually parted ways for some days and I kissed a girl, a girl that I have liked for a very long time and only then I figured that she actually liked me back, but I was stupid enough to not go for her, and wait for this guy for us to get back together and I actually told him everything, I know I shouldn’t do it, because it would only made him feel like on the edge, but by that time I felt like it was better to come clean about everything, he knew everything about me, it was only fair that I keep it like that. But then he got jealous everything I said I was talking to her in a friendly way (he never was banned from looking into my phone) and now I understand that his jealousy was not that unfounded, because I kissed this girl while we were separated.
There was numerous times when I wanted to break things with him, but he always managed to made me come back to him, one time we were walking on the sidewalk and I told him how I felt and that I was thinking about breaking up, he got on the ground, took a piece of glass and tried to h*rm himself, but I stopped him and we never talked about it again. Another time I was home, not at work because I was injured and we had a phone fight, not breaking up, but making it subtle, then a couple hours after that I received another phone call from an Unknown number, telling me that he almost threw himself on the subway and, Injured as I was, I went to get him and Uber us to his home.
I had to make two limits for him, I didn’t want him to call me before checking if it was possible for me to talk on the phone, unless it was an emergency, of course. And that I didn’t want him to go to my home unannounced, because he did it too much and he did not respect those boundaries until there was yet another conversation about breaking up and just then, he stopped doing it. He also lied to me one time when he went to the bus stop at freaking 7 am with the excuse of “I just wanted to get some air” and the proceeded to talk to me all the way about his problems and follow me to my workplace, and then he had the audacity to get mad when I told him I couldn’t stay longer because I had to get to work, just when we finally broke off he came clean that he was, obviously, trying to get a hold of me and not “Trying to get some air” as he tried to make me believe. I even started to go to my destinations by other means because I was afraid I would encounter him in every corner that I usually go to.
One of my college friends started a relationship with one of his friends and now that we broke things off, neither of them talk to me, so I am not sure what sort of fairytale he told them in which, he obviously was not in the wrong at all.
I am not asking if I was the AH here, nor asking if I should talk to him again, I am pretty confident That I shouldn’t, I just wanted to vent, thanks for anyone who would read this loooooong story. Cheers.

What works for me might not work for you, but why not give it a try and see for yourself? Adapt my style to fit your personality and preferences.

Example Roles:

Choose 2-3 roles:

• Content Creator
• Social Media Manager
• Digital Marketer

Example Profile:

Introduce yourself in 15-20 lines. Write clearly and avoid using emojis. Instead, use ASCII bullets to list items.

Straight to the point—let’s drop the time-consuming tasks that hinder your business growth! • Social Media Automation: Streamline your posting and audience engagement effortlessly. • Content Creation: Craft impactful posts and videos that truly represent your brand. • Social Media Campaigns: Launch and manage promotional campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. • Audience Engagement: Boost interactions with strategic communication and engaging content. • Analytics and Reporting: Leverage tools to monitor, analyze, and enhance your strategies for optimal results. Let's keep this simple. I’m here to support you; just share your vision, and I’ll take care of the execution! 

Skills Breakdown:

Niche Skills

• Social Media Automation: Streamline your posting and audience engagement effortlessly.
• Social Media Campaigns: Launch and manage promotional campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
• Audience Engagement: Boost interactions with strategic communication and engaging content.

Technical Skills

• Content Creation: Craft impactful posts and videos that truly represent your brand.
• Analytics and Reporting: Leverage tools to monitor, analyze, and enhance your strategies for optimal results.

Soft Skills

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Adaptability

Portfolio/Website:

• Provide a Linktree: [Your Linktree Link]
• Share links to your resume on Google Drive (initials only for privacy).
• Don't include a picture on your resume to keep the focus on your skills and experience.
• Mention your city and country in your resume's address section, but avoid providing the exact address.
• Add other relevant links as needed.

Application Strategy:

• Use a catchy subject line for your job application emails, like "Your Next SMM is Here to Support Your Vision".
• In the email, start with an introduction, propose how you can meet the job's needs, and explain why you're the best candidate.
• Optional: Include links to your internet speed, typing speed, computer specs, personality tests (like MBTI or DISC), and an English proficiency test. Also, offer a presentation of your profile and services when you confirm the client's legitimacy.

Contact Information:

• Mobile: [Mobile No.]
• Email: [Email Address]
• Skype: [Skype ID]
• Calendly: [Link to Calendly]

Keep in Mind:

• Apply to jobs with points 10 or higher to ensure your application stands out.
• Prefer live remote interviews over sending pre-recorded voice or video.
• Avoid insecure communication channels such as Telegram, WhatsApp, and Viber.
• Carefully read job descriptions to understand all requirements.
• Confirm the legitimacy of employers by checking if they have a paid account on the job platform.
• Use a professional email account for job applications to keep your personal email account secure.

Extra Mile Email:

• Create a simple, professional email signature with your full name, phone number, and a link to your LinkedIn profile or professional website. Ensure your email address looks professional, ideally using your name without nicknames or unusual numbers.

I don’t speak my fiancé’s language and I think he is starting to get tired of it
I (21f) and my fiancé (23m) are living together in his country for 2,5 years. We met on internet and we were in LDR for 1,5 years. He’s from France and I’m from Ukraine. We both speak English pretty well and that’s the language we’ve always used with each other. He’s using English a lot and I mostly use ONLY English, like talking in my head, having dreams in English, learning new things and entertaining myself. I don’t use my native languages (Ukrainian and Russian), unless I speak to someone from my country.
I guess, I’ll give a bit of backstory on our situation before dipping into the problem.
BACKSTORY:
You probably heard about the full invasion in my country. That’s the reason I am able to live with him as I have a temporary protection.
Living in France wasn’t easy for me for a long time. I already was in few years long depression when I came here, but my experience in his hometown was so awful that I got even deeper into it. And ofc war affected my mental health too. Because of how hard the life had been for me I had a hard time learning anything, so I never learned French. I tried many times ofc. I went to different courses, but my mental health was far away from letting any information stay in my head. I’m glad to say that I’m better now and I’m officially depression free, but I still have CPTSD due to abusive family and ADHD. I’m still learning how to live my life, I don’t have anyone in my life except my fiancé.
I don’t have any relationship with my French in-laws. When I came to France I was hoping that they will welcome me and help me adapt. But they were rather cold. They are toxic people and my fiancé cut them off to protect his mental health and our relationship. But even when we were still talking, I couldn’t have any conversation with them and I would just sit quietly at the dinner table. One of his sisters is actually fluent in English, but she refused using it in front of me and she never spoke to me. All the conversations were like “tell your gf that”. Like I’m a dog. They would never try to speak to me directly.
Since then we moved to another town and I’m feeling better here, yet I’ve given up trying to make any friends or connections, since it hasn’t worked before. I would say I’m content with my life. I don’t have a job, bc I don’t know the language. Again, I tried to find one. Just like I tried to connect with people here and etc.
MAIN PROBLEM:
I really want to learn French. I always loved the language. But through our relationship my fiancé was rather dismissive about me learning it. He mentioned a lot of times how he hates French and he wishes he could just talk English. He doesn’t want to speak French with me and up until now he seemed satisfied with how things are.
Few days ago I was watching Bluey in French. He came in and scoffed (his regular reaction to hearing French at home). He said that the language sounds stupid and ugly (not the first time he made this comment) and I answered “you’re the reason I still don’t know French”. He got mad and said something along the lines “oh, I am the reason? Not the fact that you’re not studying?” Ofc I didn’t mean it this way. I believe he is a PART of the reason. He tried to help me with French before, but I prefer not to bother him with that since he’s always tired of work and because he’s very bad in teaching and he has a bad grammar (his words).
When I’m trying to involve him in my study, he usually doesn’t pay attention and when I ask him a question about HIS language he can’t even answer it. For ex. I would ask him a translation of a word and he would open Google translator, like I couldn’t do it by myself.
When we go somewhere he would speak FOR me, instead of letting me talk and then translating what I said. He would not tell me what the other person said either unless I ask him. It always made me feel like a child, but no matter how many times I told him to stop he still does it.
A lot of people who heard about the fact I don’t know French, would ask him why didn’t he help me. Why wouldn’t he talk to me in French? Why wouldn’t he encourage me? Both of us are honestly tired of these questions. It only makes me feel bad when I hear people questioning me. I obviously feel insecure about not knowing French. I feel like people don’t treat me as a real adult human being because of this. I love the language, I want to learn it, so I can have a job and people will stop treating me like a freak.
Every time I try to talk about this it’s leads to nowhere. Before it felt like he doesn’t want me to know his language, but now his attitude suddenly changed and he acts like he’s tired of me not knowing French.
I, on the other hand, tried to teach him my language, since he showed interest in it. I wrote him down different rules and broke it down for him. I found him videos on YouTube. I wrote him my own texts to practice reading. I would sit down with him and teach him. He lost an interest after short time, but it just goes to show how much I was willing to help him, when all he does when I’m learning is saying how ugly French is…
TL;DR fiancé didn’t want me to learn his language and now he acts annoyed about me not knowing his language

Perhaps it's come to attention to everyone that one of the most beloved accounts u/chihan-ki-pari has deactivated/deleted their account and I maybe partly responsible for it.
But here's what I have to say -

1. How can someone take to heart what a stranger says in the internet? If you're that insecure about yourself, how can you face the real world? Well, I'm ugly as fuck but gone are the days my insecurities overcame me.
   
2. Maybe they needed a reason of their own to leave this platform and I, along with many others, gave them a reason? If it is the case then it's pathetic.
   
3. You can clearly notice how active they were in here. Maybe they wanted to get rid of this addiction and leave?
   
4. Or they still use an alt or multiple alts and still lurk around here.
   

To end, I just want to apologise for what I said. But one has to be able to digest a few jokes/sarcasms here and there. Intolerance in this matter surely won't take you far in life. The real world is even brutal.
I wish you peace.
I hope you found your mukti.

Okay I need advice…To start off with this story. I graduated high school last year and as soon as I turned 18 I got on Seeking. Honestly I don’t come from money and I was headed to college soon my dads a single dad so I decided to find a way to pay for school. It wasn’t my best idea but I did it. I also was a virgin at the time and had a lot of guys texting me. I was going to meet this other guy the day I met my now current boyfriend/sugar daddy. But the other guy ended up getting drunk so I met up with my now bf. Our age gap is pretty big I was a month into being 18 and he was 48. We met up at this hotel in my town and as soon as I got there I regretted it. He was friendly and I was very shy around him. Right after we had sex I went to the restroom and made up something about how my dad was asking where I was at it was like two am. I left the room and went to my car and cried I felt so ashamed that I could do something like that. As soon as I got home I showered and blocked him on everything. A week goes by and I tell one of my good friends and we went to Walgreens to get a plan b just to be safe. I realized soon after that I kind of enjoyed it in a way so I unblocked him and we met up again. When he first messaged me he was offering $750 a week but he only would give me $500 max. I was a little annoyed but naive. I quickly realized he wanted a relationship out of this whereas I wanted a sugar daddy only. I’m in college and I have no time for a relationship. I also had never been in a serious relationship so I became very attached to him. I would rant about past ex bfs and how I would miss them and I guess he got annoyed and started it doing it back to me. In the beginning I only saw him as a sugar daddy so I would post pictures of myself in bikinis and he would get mad at me but I wouldn’t care because he didn’t mean anything to me at the time. After a while I slowly fell in love with him I was shooked because he was old and I was young. Around this time one my siblings were getting skeptical about how I was getting money when I bark worked and went to school. She soon found out and outed me to my whole family. For a week straight my family would call me all sorts of names and that was definitely a low point for me. I was feeling really bad at the time and wanted to run away with him. I later found out he was watching porn behind my back and I felt so mad and sad at the same time. How could he have me and watch those things I thought. He swore to me that he would not do it again and he watched it when he was younger so I guess he kind of got addicted to it in a way. I forgave him and we went on with our relationship. We’ve since been together for almost a year. About two months ago I saw him in many girls likes and follows. They would post there body’s and everything. Not shaming that because I used to do that I was upset with my bf because he would get mad at me and call me insecure when I would do it but liked pictures of other girls doing it. I confronted him about it and he said he was sorry and that he wouldn’t do it again. Fast forward to last week I was hanging out with him and I kept checking my phone thinking my dad was going to call because I sneaked out to see him. My bf got suspicious and told me to open up my phone so I did. I showed him my messages and snap and he saw that a guy friend had sent me a streak. He was so upset and saying why I was texting another guy. I told him it was a exchange student friend I met in high school and I had a streak with him to keep in touch he was really mad and so I tried to apologize and comfort him. After he said he forgave me and then he got on his phone. Keep in mind he never lets me get on his phone. He owns his own business and he says he doesn’t want me to see his business plans as if I would know what to do with them. I went to his instagram messages and he snatches his phone after he does that I grab it from him and see he texted this girl that had her arch pic as her profile pic. She had slid up on his story and said baeee where he replied with what she said that he had tooken a long time to reply where he said a little:) with a smiley face. I was furious I had drove over and hour to see him and I got my things and I was crying hysterically. He told me he was sorry but somehow blamed it on me. He started yelling at me and saying if you think I want that whore then leave. I was like wtf you texted her back and I’m the one getting shouted at. I later forgave him but now I feel like I let it be okay for so long he’ll just do it again. I’m so in love with him and I don’t want to leave him. I would like someone different to see it in another perspective. Did he make mistakes that I should just forgive or should I just leave now?

Advice on my situation. It’s a sensitive one as it’s around finance but I don’t know what to do.
My boyfriend I and have been together for nearly 3 years. He is 5 years younger but a senior manager at the same place I work, we met through work. He was in the process of buying his first house and I had just split up from my engagement to my previous partner so didn’t want to get too heavily involved too quick, especially contributing to the deposit. He could afford that on his wage on his own. A year later I have moved in with him and with him earning more than me he pays slightly more towards his mortgage than I do but everything else is split 50/50.
I recently saw his internet banking. I know I have no right and I wasn’t snooping I just saw it but I want to start looking towards the future, marriage, children that sort of thing and I’ve been saving as much as I can. He tells me he has too £800+ a month and he’s been saying that for the last year. He also said he has £3k on a credit card even telling my mum he wants to sort that out first before he plans on popping the question. What I saw did not confirm this. There is double that on his credit card and less savings than I have despite him being on £20k a year more than me and supposedly saving more than I do each month. He says he only banks with a particular bank so I don’t think there’s even another account somewhere. Apparently to buy the house he didn’t use all his savings so where has this money gone? Why is he lieing to me? I almost feel betrayed and very insecure 😕
How can I approach this?

Advice on my situation. It’s a sensitive one as it’s around finance but I don’t know what to do.
My boyfriend I and have been together for nearly 3 years. He is 5 years younger but a senior manager at the same place I work, we met through work. He was in the process of buying his first house and I had just split up from my engagement to my previous partner so didn’t want to get too heavily involved too quick, especially contributing to the deposit. He could afford that on his wage on his own. A year later I have moved in with him and with him earning more than me he pays slightly more towards his mortgage than I do but everything else is split 50/50.
I recently saw his internet banking. I know I have no right and it wasn’t on purpose, I didn’t go snooping but I do want to start looking towards the future, marriage, children that sort of thing and I’ve been saving as much as I can. He tells me he has too £800+ a month and he’s been saying that for the last year. He also said he has £3k on a credit card even telling my mum he wants to sort that out first before he plans on popping the question. What I saw did not confirm this. There is double that on his credit card and less savings than I have despite him being on £20k a year more than me and supposedly saving more than I do each month. He says he only banks with a particular bank so I don’t think there’s even another account somewhere. Apparently to buy the house he didn’t use all his savings either so where has this money gone? Why is he lieing to me? I almost feel betrayed and very insecure 😕
How can I approach this?

To whoever reads this,
i love you
i love your smile i love your laugh i love your personality i love your hair (or lack thereof) i love you even if you have insecurities i love your accomplishments i love you even if you have failures i love your eyes i love your beauty i love your handwriting (or the way you communicate) i love the way you dance i love you on your happy days i love you even on sad days i love you on the days you feel lonely i love you on the days you feel helpless i love you on the days you feel like no one cares i love you on the days you feel forgotten i love you on the days you feel unmotivated i love you on the days you feel loved i love you on the days you feel sick i love you on the days you feel motivated i love you on the days you feel depressed i love you on the days you feel stresses i love you on the days you feel crazy i love you on the days you feel hopeful i love you on the days you feel cuddly i love you on the days you feel clingy i love you on the days you feel amazing i love you on the days you feel beautiful i love you on the days you feel like a failure i love you on the days you feel angry i love you on the days you feel aggressive i love you on the days you feel horrible i love you on the days you feel safe i love you on the days you feel unsafe i love you on the days you feel vulnerable i love you on the days you feel weird i love you on the days you feel ok i love you when you're healthy i love how you sing (or hum or feel the music) i love your taste in music i love your taste in movies i love your taste in tv shows i love the way you act i love you even if you cry i love you when you're kind i love you even if you you're mean i love you even if you're alone i love you even if you can't feel i love you even if you feel too much i love you even if you can't take life anymore i love you even if you feel like it's too much i love you when you're asleep i love you even if you have nightmares i love you when you have dreams i love how you believe i love you when you believe in yourself i love you even if you don't believe in yourself i love you even if you hate yourself i love you when you love yourself i love the way you think i love you even if you have problems i love your solutions i love how you support i love you even if you're in pain i love you even if you're hurt i love your promises i love your secrets i love your attitude i love you sass i love your creativity i love your voice (or lack thereof) i love you hand gestures i love your stories i love you even if you have wounds i love you even if you have scars i love your face i love your past i love your future i love your present i love your outfits i love your style i love your art i love your honesty i love you even if you lie i love you even if you're tired i love you when you're energetic i love how you look i love how you cook i love you when you're adventurous i love you even if you're scared i love your imperfections i love your perfections i love you even if you worry i love you when you talk (or communicate) i love your opinions i love you even if you have headache i love you even if you have a stomach ache i love you when you help others i love you when you're mature i love you even if you're immature i love you in the hard times i love you in the easy times i love you even if life isn't bright i love you when you're responsible i love you even if you're irresponsible i love you even if you fight i love you in your darkest moments i love you in your brightest moments i love your heart i love you in the day . i love you in the night i love you at midnight i love you at 3 am i love you at all times i love you at your best i love even if your worst i love the little things you do
i love all of you i love you when you're you
i love 𝙮𝙤𝙪.
and even if this is not mine.. spread it around the internet, everyone needs of love <3
-a stranger who cares <3

Yes, there are many uncut men who publicly wish for circumcision to be made illegal. Just check Twitter. Or Reddit. Or anywhere on the internet.
This is so, so, so embarrassing. I don't think people understand just how embarrassing this is.
Imagine seeking to control an entire public...every single parent's choice...every single sub-culture in America...just because you're insecure about your penis. Then imagine pretending it's a righteous cause by fabricating a human rights violation in the men who are more fortunate than you, and getting off on calling them "victims" because it comforts your victimhood and inferiority complex. Then imagine hiding behind a couple cherry-picked, token cut men, as though their brainwashing should speak over the vast majority of other cut men and everyone else with basic thinking skills. Unimaginably selfish, dishonest, disrespectful, cowardly, stupid. Shameless, and not in a cute way. It is sad and scary how desperate uncut men are to cope.
We don't ban practices just because uncut men are triggered that circumcision exists on the basis of their problems, and that cut men are cleaner, healthier, happier, grateful to avoid their problems and naturally chosen over them. We don't punish the public just because uncut men are guilty that they damage public health ). And we don't uplift uncut men at the expense of entire groups and cultures of people.
But none of that matters to uncut men who are so extremely insecure that they would sacrifice science, medicine, cultures, art and the freedom of the entire public just to be at peace with themselves. Pablo from Twitter would apparently wish for X amount of women to receive cervical cancer, X amount of men to receive penile cancer, or basically jail the entire Jewish community, just to cope with his ugly dick if given the choice. That's horrific, unconscionable, nauseating, and truly foul.
It's astonishing, hilarious and a travesty that even one human being, one human being of the 8 billion and change who exist, supports any of these uncut men who have so such dangerously low IQ, self-control and character that they would sooner project their problems onto an entire public than counsel their problems.
No, neither circumcision nor circumcised men are going anywhere, ever, no matter how violently, uncontrollably triggered uncut men are by their existence.
And since uncut men are so hellbent on making it a competition, let's settle this. Which is better, cut or uncut? Well, being uncut is so awful and miserable that uncut men are prepared to literally hurt millions of people just to cope with their dicks. So, that's that.

I am m17 and my ex is f16, and I need some advice. I still feel like there is a chance for us again, but I need some advice from another perceptive.
When I was 16 last year I met my ex-girlfriend and we dated for 5 months after knowing each other for 4 beforehand. We rushed our relationship, as it was our first, and we did a lot of things before waiting. We talked about marriage and how much we loved each other only after 3 months.
Last year she broke up with me because I didn't respect her boundaries. I would bike to her house late at night to try and talk to her about our problems and I destroyed our trust when we shared social media passwords (bad idea). Before she broke up with me she took a week's break to reminisce, I guess? Anyway after the break we hung out and it was good I was still obsessive and clingy so the day later, she broke up with me. From my perspective at the time it seemed like she just didn't want to communicate with me when she was angry or in her feelings but I've recently looked at our old texts and my heart has sunk. I was constantly spamming her, even when she was asleep and couldn't respond, sending paragraph after paragraph showing my insecurities. I won't get into what argument started all this, but I had found something I had no business finding from years prior that made me insecure for some reason.
Since then, after looking back at our old conversation the day we broke up, my perception has changed. She told me that she didn't want to break up but my neediness had gotten too much. The whole conversation I was ignoring her, and flaming her for "victimizing" herself.
I say ignoring, because today when I looked at the text a year later, I didn't recognize anything that she had texted me, but I remembered everything that I said.
That's going to be almost from a year ago (May 27th) and I still have never apologized to her about this, we have spoken since and apologized about other things but, truth be told I didn't think I did anything wrong until I re-read these texts today.
3 months later, after absolutely no contact (I was blocked, but she occasionally unblocked me from time to time as I can remember) She texted me saying "I know you probably hate me but I want to know if you're okay" I waited a bit to respond but eventually we had a calm and respective convo catching up a lil bit. The topic changed to "trying again" and she told me she wanted to, as she felt she made a mistake.
In my head, I was overjoyed. For the past 3 months, I had been waiting for this, not thinking about a single thing. But I didn't listen to my heart. Instead of using the no contact to heal and forgive, I had become full of loathing and pride. Since I didn't originally understand what I did wrong in our relationship, I had fully expected her to put all the effort into making our relationship work again, as I thought and assumed she would as in my eyes she was at fault. We met twice, just going on walks and talking. On the 2nd walk, I asked her about the guy she had met at a party and started getting defensive. She assured me it was nothing she only saw him at the party, and she didn't have feelings for him and she didn't pursue him at all, and for some reason, I didn't believe her. I still remember that walk, I kept bringing up the bad parts of our relationship instead of rebuilding it, which we had both agreed on before hanging out again. I was supposed to be having a sleepover with my friend but instead, I was walking around with her and it got very late.
Honestly looking back, I didn't care about her talking stage or how we broke up, I still had my heart set on being with her again regardless. But for some reason, it might have been pride, insecurities or both, but I kept constantly bringing it up, to get an apology out of her.
Then my friend's dad found us in his truck and screamed at me.
We haven't talked since.
But i was petty on social media and i had returned the gifts she had given me just to hurt her.
Fast forward to December, I decided I was going to send her a letter. I dont remember what was on that letter, but I know it was a bunch of begging fake apology bullcrap to say im sorry. It was not heartfelt, just a way to try and get her back but it seemed desperate.
I was desperate. She gave me a second chance and I blew it.
Weeks go by and I get a call from the police. Her mom went to them to tell them to not contact her anymore. I was heartbroken.
I listened to the police and didn't contact her.
I still look at her TikTok reposts all the time tho, and she still reposts a lot of stuff I think is about me. Her old friend and I talked a lot about how she felt in August when we tried again, and she told me that she hadn't been in a relationship since, and convinced me to send the letter. Anyways the tiktoks are Sometimes good, (TikTok's about still thinking about your ex, )and sometimes bad, (TikTok's comparing your ex to the Kendrick Lamar line: "I hate the way that you talk, walk, dress" 💀) I feel like that isn't enough though cuz shes probably just trying to live a tv life, by expressing tiktoks I dont know.
The whole reason I came here is that my friends saw her recently with another guy, but they told me she didn't look happy and they weren't holding hands.
We've been broken up for longer than we've been together and i haven't spent a day not thinking about her. I do think our relationship was worth it to me and i feel more mature but i feel that its too late. If anyone took the time to read this full thing, I am so grateful and I would love your advice.
Thank you.