I don't know what inspired me to make this post, possibly it was finding out that this subreddit exists and has such a large following.
I've had GERD for 7-8 years now. I'm only in my mid 20's and was diagnosed with it by doing a gastroscopy. At the time, I weighed 115kg (255lbs) as a teen male. I now weigh about 84kg (185lbs).
Ever since it was first diagnosed I remember having food that I have swallowed re-surface dozens and dozens of time each day, possibly even 100 times per day (I don't keep count).
At first, I was prescribed Omeprazole but didn't take it consistently; I didn't experience heartburn most of the time and so I didn't see the need to take it most of the time. I refrain from eating a lot of deep fried food and in general I don't use a lot of oil when cooking (blessed be air fryer). When I was younger I also remember espresso sometimes being a cause for heartburn but that has also subsided.
The following paragraph is a bit graphic in detailing my regurgitation, feel free to skip it. Basically, the entire effect of my GERD is food being regurgitated too many times to count per day. It is unpleasant but definitely in the last few years it doesn't cause any heartburn or other form of pain. Usually, I have become used to re-chewing and re-swallowing the food I have regurgitated. I think if I was to throw up every single time I had regurgitated it would cause me to throw up most of the calories I have consumed throughout the day. Of course, throwing up regurgitated food reduces the amount of times the regurgitation happens. On very rare occasions the amount of liquids and foods being regurgitated at a single time is so much that a bit of it spits out of my mouth because I can't contain all of it, it is disgusting but very rare. I should also note that the regurgitation happens regardless of how much I eat (or drink!). Just drinking a cup of coffee for instance causes regurgitations over the span of a few hours. Many times I feel the food or liquids are almost sitting inside my neck and I cause myself to regurgitate (Yes, I can regurgitate at will pretty much, with a similar motion to one where a person may cause himself to willingly burp) to sort of re-chew them and swallow back just so that it sort of relieves it.
I'm making this post because I'm not sure what to do. Last time I went to a gastroenterologist I insisted on getting another Gastroscopy, saying I demand to monitor my esophagus every 5 years. According to the medical staff, that gastroscopy (which I did maybe 2-3 years ago), didn't show any worsening of my esophagus, it is the opinion of the few medical doctors I talked with that I shouldn't do the "wrap" surgery, though I assume I can insist on doing if I deem necessary and it would be covered. I'm just not sure if it's the right solution.
When I talk with doctors about the frequency of my regurgitation it seems as if they don't believe me, which can be frustrating. As if I'm just making the number up as an exaggeration. I'm worried that my GERD will eventually injure my esophagus and possibly even cause cancer in the esophagus when I grow up. I've had GERD since I was a teenager, it will stay with me for life since losing weight didn't help in relieving it, and it is clear that the frequency of regurgitation is alarming.
Also by making this post I wonder how rare this actually is, and if people have experienced the same thing, how they dealt with it and should it be a cause for concern. I feel sort of alone in my condition.

I will try to keep it short
I'm a 26M currently living in UAE but originally from Syria, these details are important because they tell pretty much about my childhood. I was raised in a war environment in one of the most dangerous cities in the world "Aleppo City" when I was a kid I didn't have a normal childhood, we were under siege for a couple of times had to witness extremist sides had to see people sniped in-front of my eyes people being threatened, me personally got threatened countless times, my university got bombed, and due to war we lost a house and had to spend my life even when I was in college I had to work a 9-10 hours each day in order to make money and help my father to pay the rent and I graduated from English Literature with a BA. we have a small family of 6 members including mom and dad and me personally I value my family a lot, like my family comes before anything else. and due to war my brother immigrated to Germany and my sister was already living in UAE with her husband and kids, 4 years ago my father passed away and I had to witness it and I had to bury him and see it all alone with other random strangers and a couple of friends because my brother was in Germany and I was the only male in the family, after my dad passed away, my sister who lives in UAE developed a brain cancer and she undergone with a surgery which was a failed attempt to remove the tumor. I sold an gave away everything I had in Syria all my belongings my clothes my memories everything. and took my mom and traveled to UAE just to stay with my sister.
I came to UAE and I needed to find a job so I can still make money and stay in UAE, I'm quite professional at my job and before living Syria I was a Sales & Marketing Team leader at one of the finest academic educational institutes and I was always praised by my managers, I came to UAE and struggled a bit to find a job because in UAE they favor nationalities over other ones (yes this still exists) finally I found a job but im always under threat if being terminated and I'm underpaid and overtasked and even my manager says that I deserve to take double my wage but they just can't do it because they don't have the money since its a startup company.
still this is not a problem, after I finish my work I come back to home to see my sister's suffering because of the stupidity of the doctors here, she is now undergoing chemo therapy and whenever we ask how's it going they say we don't know we just need to wait even though she is taking the chemo therapy now for more than 2 years and her situation is not getting any better.
I can't do anything literally I just sit and think of my life, and why I had to suffer all my life? sometimes I just think if this the half of my life why do I need to exist? if my beloved ones are not okay whats the worth of living such a miserable life.
btw i'm an optimistic out-going friendly person but I had enough of this miserable life I can't take it anymore

I don't have the link on hand but a while ago I remember reading a thread on here about mixed gender games and how there were some in the CN gacha community there who were of the mind that devs should focus on catering to one audience with their games because having a mixed audience where they try to please both results in not pleasing either and also causes clashes within the communities due to not being able to co-exist.
I wasn't sure what to think of it but since I read that post I feel like I've been taking note of what they were talking about as I look at other games recently.
On the Wuthering Waves reddit and twitter for instance even though the game isn't out yet I'm already seeing instances of people calling for censorship of the female characters. One of the chief complaints being that the male characters are not sexualized in the same way since there are no exposed genitals or testicle physics on the male characters.
The general vibe being that they won't stop complaining until they "sexualize" the characters equally. The only problem with this perspective being that they are never going to add ball physics to the game. In fact, I'm not even sure if ball physics are present in games that are marketed towards a female audience (otome).
So it seems like the game is in a funny spot now where even though it's clearly marketed towards men with the sexy female characters you have a contingent of people in the fanbase who take issue with its existence and frequently mention that they would rather it be gone and downvote comments that express a like for fanservice that's in the game.
Snowbreak in comparison seems to be aiming towards solidifying it's desire to satisfy a single audience instead of catering to many. Things like the male character removal in beta, logistics changes and an increase in fanservice compared to the initial launch seem to be aimed at communicating to the players that they plan to give those who want female fanservice what they want. This move seems to have resulted in a huge resurgence for them as the frequent communication and earnestness to appeal to players who want female fanservice has been noted by the wider community in CN at least.
In comparison to Wuthering and some other big mixed gender games I've played in the past (Genshin/HSR) it does seem like the original post I mentioned might have some merit, in that catering to a single audience without compromise is likely to result in a more harmonious community if there's nothing to attract those who think fanservice for female characters is bad in the first place.
I guess the sad thing is that people end up drawing this conclusion in the first place. I do like mixed gender games, but I think I understand now why some are vying for more single gender games if it means that those who can't help but attack what they like end up never coming to it in the first place.
Ideally we'd live in a world where everyone gets along but I think that as long as there are those who attack female fanservice for existing there will be a growing desire for single gender games to cut off those kinds of conflicts before they start.
My question for the thread is what do you think of the idea I mentioned in the first paragraph? Is it better to have single gender games over mixed gender to avoid those kinds of conflicts? Given how Snowbreak has turned out I think I can guess that most here might opt for single gender games but feel free to elaborate if you wish.

If u think about it....jerma is essentially what u would call a tv or radio personality....or in this case a media personality on twitch. people tune in to listen to them talk and their dialogue and the interesting things they have to say, what they actually do is not of any particular importance,its just gives them some content to talk about or serve as an inspiration while they are doing it..... although it does contribute to the entertainment at the same time.
I'm pretty sure more than anything jerma enjoys being a personality..the greatest proof being some of the skits he put up, the elbertson family dinner for one thing,I'm pretty sure that's his real family, they have to be extremely familiar with one another to behave like that with each other for an hour and no way someone could have scripted a dinner conversation like that and even the best actors in the world could adlibbed such a scene.....u could tell right away something was fake or off,u can tell when some people are pretending to be someone they are not, Like the skit where people auditioned to be jerma.....u can tell it's a fake made up persona instantly...people just aren't creative enough to craft an entire persona and how they would act or think instinctively with great nuance it would take months of writing and carefully crafting and great imagination like Hannibal lecter from Westworld and hundreds of takes to act out hundreds of scenes that make up a one hour long dinner...and even then the movie persona is a part of the actors personality,Anthony Hopkins in Westworld can only act out roles that is like him or suits him. It's insane to think that u can get a bunch of random people to pretend to be ur family members without a script for an hour on such levels of familiarity and insanity yet so normal. It's crazy to think about it but that was probably his real family and brothers...but in some high level meta chess game he's pretending it's not But the most importing was that was one of the most insane comedy gold ever,
Being a personality ..is not just something they have done for nearly all their adult lives and it's part of who they are being entertainers to give it up is mind boggling it would literally be giving up their identities....like Cedric the entertainer or Dave Chappelle or that guy on family feud whose been clinging on to television since forever
There are many personalities that had incredibly long careers,for example David letterman has been hosting late night for nearly 35 years, bob parker the price is right also for 35 years,or Howard Stern also had a 4 decade long career and is still going,even people like Alex Jones has been on air since the 2000s..I used to be obsessed with Howard Stern and jon steward back in the late 2000s and early 2010s and binge watch or listen to years of episodes..the fact is people tune in to watch or listen to these people because they are entertaining personalities.
There is nothing stopping jerma from having a career as long as that, especially when considering he is still in his prime and peak of popularity,its not like he's dragging and beating a dead horse for years like dsp.
I'm sure jerma enjoys being a personality and would easily do it for decades given the appropriate format and also maybe audience.
I mean why would he quit jerma 985?I'm pretty sure part of it could be he's been doing this for so long....and a huge part of it is his audience, If it wasn't for the fact that most of the audience he attracts the last few years are young,and getting younger,but as a man approaching forty, no matter how young and childish jerma acts sometimes which is part of his appeal to the younger kids and connects him to them,there is alienation and disconnect not only generational and cultural difference but young people talk very differently,like very young people,and think and act very differently,while jerma is just an tired old man and old soul inside..as old as asmongold exterior already looks...I don't envy him imagine being an old man already in ur late twenties or thirties and having to deal with a bunch of teens and early mid twenties in chat, not to mention the generational conflict in thinking and styles of logic not saying jerma is the eptiome of logic but he is an example of a thirty something year old male.interacting with such a chat and a certain level of toxicity for years on end can wear u down psychologically and mentally.
If he had the right platform and format of content and maybe a slightly different audience, slightly older and more matured like jon steward tonight show or Howard Stern back in the 2000s maybe jerma could have chugged on for a while more.

years ago I deciding to open myself up and date outside my race. I 35F would have probably done so sooner as I do find white men attractive, however my previous neighborhood was mostly people of color and I guess the oppurtunity never presented itself.
I now live in a different state. In an area where a major portion of the male population is white. In my town family, church, and conservative values are very important.
Best case scenario, would be for me to meet someone in person while attending events or church functions. Aside from that, its also common for friends/family to engage in match making. I 've heard several times from coworker and, acquaintances that "I know the perfect guy for you, but I'm not sure if you're his type. He usually dates blondes". Conversations have also arisen about how important it is to be accepted by your partner's family. I ran into an issue about 5 years ago, when I met the family of a guy I was dating. It was a very tense and uncomfortable experience, and it was the reason we felt it best to end things.
I shared all that in order to ask how do you (white men) feel about interracial dating, and how do you thing it would be viewed by your immediate and extended family. Is their disapproval something that would make you reconsider your relationship. Also, I don't know how to let a white man know Im interested without being too flirty. The guys really seem oblivious and will say as much if and when we actually start talking. What are some of you all thoughts?

I am twenty three years old and about to be twenty four. To society, I am male, sometimes I think about having a different persona than male though. Such as being neither male or female or my gender blending between the two. I was diagnosed with social anxiety in my teenage years and later developed into general anxiety disorder. I also am schizo, it mostly comes through sounds and sometimes small visions. Also, I deal with depression on a daily basis. Sometimes I wake up and do not want to be alive or other days I hear a sound that only I can hear to put it into context.
My upbringing consisted of my mom wanting us to attend church and learn about Jesus, the bible, Christianity. But I never truly believed in it even as a child, even when forced. And, I never attended church either, it was just something my mother would have liked us to do. I mainly became more spiritual as I grew older and it gave me a more open outlook if I do decide to have kids. I did feel bad, and even now that I did not follow the same religion as her. I try to be an agnostic regarding God as a whole.
If I spent a weekend by myself, it would feel refreshing to be honest. I like silence, to hear my thoughts when I am in that relaxed state. External noise is very bothersome to me and it troubles me to concentrate. Being alone never bothered me, I feel powerful when I am alone. I prefer activities that are at my house, so gaming, reading, drawing, typing, writing, etc.
Sports at a young age, I was involved in but it felt forced upon my parents. My dad would claim the opposite, but it felt forced since I was put into football, baseball, and basketball, and I always had mixed feelings about those sports specifically and made me feel like an outcast to this day. Even though those sports are not my favorite, they taught me what I actually do like instead. Such as table tennis and bowling, and e-sports. I never understood the reason sports are popular, or why some people are gifted with special abilities at birth, but I am ok at some sports, good at some, and bad at others such as golf.
I am relatively curious, I'd say, not necessarily ideas that I want to execute. But, they are just my curiosities about the world, like is there really a God, or does gmo food cause cancer, and just things like that, sometimes taboo. I never liked leading something, it felt like there was too much pressure on me or something. If I tried it, I might be decent at it, who knows? But I prefer to not lead, and feel I would be bad at it anyways, so why try? My leadership style would just make sure everyone’s on the same page and treat everyone equally. I think I am coordinated, I don't really like using my hands though I would rather just think about it.
Artistic? I mean kind of, I did film photography, and enjoyed that. My film photography was dark and I was told it seemed to have hidden meaning behind it. Sometimes I draw in my journal with pencil sketches and that is it. I appreciate the aesthetic of pencil only drawings. I like to do it but I sometimes think it looks bad, sometimes good. That is why art is subjective to me.
The past is something that can help with the future and present, but you do not have to rely on it. The present is whatever to me, very mundane. I like to put emphasis on the future, since that gives you an opportunity to grow in some way.
When someone asks for my help, I usually do not want to do it, probably due to my laziness. But if I do decide to help I would do it because I am being forced to. I would say logical consistency is important to me, so yes. Efficiency and productivity are important to me given what context it is. I do not control others, I feel more controlled if anything. My hobbies are collecting expensive pokemon cards, reading, and typing. My learning style is unknown to me, I struggle with loud learning environments and if there is more than one person. I struggle with those things due to my social anxiety. Classes in general give me anxiety unless they are online but I prefer a creative class I think such as the photography class.
I am ok at strategizing I guess, I do a combination of having a structure and improvising. Something important to me is finding a potential partner, having a good education, and finding peace within myself. My aspiration is to love myself deeply. My fear is losing my memory, having cancer, or the fear of holes, makes my skin itch. I would hate it if I was called ignorant or stupid to be honest because that seems like the worst to me. A “high” in my life would be talking to my dad about my dreams in life while on the porch. It feels good to know there is a decent foundation regarding my dad and I even though we do not talk much. A “low” in my life would be having to go through the mental health situations that I can never forget.
I am attached to reality, but often see myself dreaming of being somewhere else, or being someone else, or putting myself into someone else's shoes and see how it feels. When I day dream it can sometimes feel like the world stops and I am in motion while everything stops.
If I was alone in a room, an empty, isolated room. I would think about my parents or even my brothers. Or, how to get out of this inevitable death we call life. If I had to make an important decision, it would take me a long time I feel. But, if I make a decision on something I do not usually change my mind though unless what I did was really irrational. My sad emotions are of great importance to me, sometimes I feel I do not cry enough because it feels so good when I do cry. It could take me hours to express my emotions or realize them.
I appease others a lot. I feel unnecessarily, mainly because I am a peaceful person and will do things to keep it so. But, then again I am not really a conversationalist to begin with. So it makes it seem I am a people pleaser possibly? But, in reality… I would really just like to get out of the situation I am in.
To be honest, I rarely break rules. But, sometimes do think authority should be challenged in some way or they might think they rule over more than what they have.

Back when I was still super young I was extremely dysphoric even though I didn't really understand what any of that meant, I would occasionally have thoughts of wanting to be a girl but couldn't really let myself think about it too much, I had heard of guys who had become girls before but it was pretty much entirely through comedy movies and shows where they were always portrayed as super ugly and as the but of the joke. I had just started watching the sitcom Boy Meets World and eventually got to the famous episode 15 of season 4 "Chick Like Me".
The episode is essentially about the main character Cory trying to make a serious article for the school news paper, eventually landing on the idea of dressing as a woman in order to better understand the female perspective during dates as at the beginning of the episode there was a whole discussion about how "men are too focused on their next move to hear them saying no". They eventually come to the conclusion that his friend Shawn who was disagreeing with the take on men should be the one to dress up as they had found that he was much better at doing the feminine mannerisms. BUT I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR THE REVEAL!! The next scene starts with the gang going to school with Shawn in the full getup and my child brain was not ready for them to actually look good, they nervously walk around and talk about that they should probably get a girl name to use, Cory suggests one but Shawn interjects that they would like to go with veronica admitting that they had thought about it before, this paired with them also having a pretty good girl voice and getting really into it leads many people (including myself) to believe that they actually might be trans. They eventually go on a date with a guy and ending up fully understanding the statement, they knockout the guy after he gets way too touchy and tries to improve the way they treat women from then on.
This episode did a lot for me. Seeing representation of a biological male dressing as a woman and actually being super attractive to me made me actually start thinking that dressing feminine and looking good is possible (although it took some thinking for me to come to terms with the fact that I was not only into them but also wanted to be them), at the time I was still kinda struggling with getting out of the weird self hate fueled alt-right pipeline on YouTube and it really helped me with it. It also kinda helped me with realizing that I am not really exclusively attracted to biological women but just anyone who looks feminine. Overall although there are quite a few moments in this show that did not age very well for trans audiences, this episode was genuinely impactful for me and I am very happy that I chose to watch it.
way to watch the episode if you are interested

Hello, I am a 17, soon to be 18, y.o. male. It is kind of complicated but try to keep up with me. A lot of my friends have girlfriends or they have done the thing and I kind of feel left out. I have that kind of feeling where on one hand I want a nice girlfriend who is going to love me and be by my side for who I am. I want to lose my virginity with that girl and not some random girl or hooker who doesn't like me whatsoever. I want it to be a special moment for the both of us and not just something pleasurable for me and another day at work for her. At the same time, though, I think that I don't want any relationship and I just want to experience how pussy feels like. I think I am kind of ugly to get a good girlfriend, because I am overweight but my parents and friends tell me that it doesn't work like that. They tell me that I am able to get a girlfriend and I just don't try. I don't know what it is. Maybe I just haven't tried hard enough to attract any females. This is something I generally feel. Now that I will become an adult in 16 days and live by myself in 2 months or so, I think about this a lot more. I feel like waiting, getting in a better shape, and in general bettering myself, but at the same time I just can't wait (sorry, I am horny 24/7, testosterone is pumping in my blood haha). Anyway what do you think? Maybe some girl will she this and help me (lol)... I am down bad sorry. Some say men rule the world, but the truth is that pussy rules the world.
TLDR: I am horny, I can't decide between waiting to have sex or doing it when I become an adult

Sorry if this post is long but I need some advice .
I (YA, M) lost my parents to gang violence when I was a teen, and automatically inherited the house (I’m the only child). The house is fairly big, and since I’ve been an orphan I’ve been taking care of the bills, which is really expensive for a teen. I was still in school, puberty hit me like a fucking brick and I was struggling to make ends meet while mourning the death of my parents. My parents didn’t leave me much, and since I’ve never learned how to be financially responsible, I went broke. I opened up my dream food stand that did struggle in the beginning and I did everything else to bring in money, including a part time job and growing magic mushrooms. Juggling all that while maintaining a good grade lead me to relieving stress in unhealthy ways, mainly sex. I had a roster of girls (and few women) that I would see on the regular, including this woman who I’m calling Lia (YA). We became best friends before we became FWB. It was around this time that I became a teen dad by another woman, (who I pay child support to) who I still see to this day.
Anyway, a Sim year went by and I graduated early and I was finally financially stable enough to afford the bills. However, I’m still a sex addict and there’s a few women that I just can’t let go, which is Lia, my baby mama (my fav), and this married chick who’s a former prostitute. But some months ago, I met this very attractive woman (let’s call her Anya) and she’s truly different. She’s sweet, is really big on caring for the environment, talented, loves gardening and a great cook. I met her at my food stand. She was very charming. We ended up hanging out a few times and turns out that we have amazing compatibility! And even though I wanted to take it a step further and have sex with her, I had a little more respect for her than I thought. But that didn’t stop me from seeing my other flings.
Then one day I finally went over to her place for the first time, and to my surprise she wanted to do more than just hang out. It was good, but I was daydreaming about my baby mama after we were finished. While I was there, I took note of her home. It was… humble I would say, but its cute and really suits her. And judging by the neighborhood, I knew the rent was dirt cheap, especially hers because she was so eco-friendly. So my gears get to turning and this is where I may be the asshole. I’m coming up with a plan to move into her place solely to pay less rent. I was going to make her fall in love with me and convince her to let me move in with her so I can focus on expanding my business and stacking my bread for a bigger better house. And again, this girl is just full of surprises because before I could even execute the plan, she ASKED me to move in! Turns out she already has deep feelings for me and wants to take things to the next level. I immediately said yes but in the back of my mind I feel awful. I didn’t plan on being exclusive with her this soon, especially since we’ve only had sex ONCE and I already want to go out and see my favorite girl… But I was also ready to not have to pay those expensive ass bills, so… I said yes. Even though deep down I knew that my future plans probably wouldn’t even include her…
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve moved in and I just as expected, rent was WAY cheaper. The thing is I still haven’t made her my girlfriend yet. And lately Lia has been becoming bold and is popping up to the house while Anya is at work. Even my BM. I’m starting to feel bad, but sex with Anya isn’t as good as it is with Lia and my BM. Rarely see my married fling nowadays. I’m starting to care about Anya, and I can see day by day that she fall more in love with me and I know that she’s just waiting for me to ask her to be mine. But idk if I’m ready yet…
Recently, Lia invited me out on a date and I could see that she is visibly pregnant. She confessed to me that I am the father (which I will be getting a paternity test because she does have a male roommate that she’s been intimate with before). I feel like everything is happening too fast in my life. I already have a child to take care of, a woman at home that I’m leading on and now this? And to top it off, Lia asked me to be her boyfriend! I don’t know what to do! I know I brought this all on myself but I could use some help. AITA for all of this? Should I just cut everyone off, and stay with Anya regardless of how I feel? Should I say yes to Lia and break it off with Anya, hindering my plans of having a better future? Or Should I confess to Anya about everything or keep it a secret?

Hello everyone!
A little context to this question: I’m insecure? Well, it’s complicated. I love myself, I know I’m beautiful to myself, but I’ve always been “scared” I’m not beautiful to others, specifically men I’m attracted to or want to be with.
But, after reading “The Courage to be Disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga (great read!), I realized that my conclusion of “men I’m attracted to being unattracted to me because I’m ‘ugly”’ is a fat lie.
I realized, with this book’s help, that this was self preservation. My truest fear is being hurt by men, especially in my romantic life. Being “hurt” by them could be anything, from murdering me to actually thinking I’m ugly and not telling me.
I’ve never long-term dated men and, if I have, I’ve never been extremely attracted to them and usually leave after a little bit due to XYZ reasons of them not being for me.
I know I’m not alone in the fear of men, my fear of male violence, but I never seem to find any other women debilitated by it to the point where it affects their dating life like mine. My friends actively fear men, hate them even, and still date like it’s nothing. Like how do they do it? you mean to tell me you’re afraid of men but you’re not consumed by it when you’re near them?
The question I seek advice for, is “How do I get over this fear of men hurting me?” and, for any women/ppl attracted to men out there who understand me, how did you get over it/work through it?
edit: I know I have a section on my friends’ opinions on men but I promise they aren’t that influential in my fear! they have plenty nice to say about men too, i just wanted to acknowledge that I know this fear is shared across women’s spaces but I don’t often see it affect women to the point of be unable to date men out of fear. hope that makes sense 🤔

In January of 2023 my wife, I’ll call her S, left me. A bit of backstory because this is mostly my fault. Me and her moved from Florida to Washington 6 years ago for me to find better work. Her dad, brother and I were all best friends for a while and her dad was my boss that’s how I met her. We started dating in 2016 when I lived in Jacksonville and was attending welding school. When I moved back to my hometown I couldn’t find work and eventually went back to work with the company her dad worked at, I ran my own shop. I hated it I was so depressed I wanted to weld but she didn’t want me to because she’d be alone while I was on the road so I stayed. Her mom is a meth addict and is very violent and her dad is laid back as it gets but an alcoholic non the less. I was living with my parents at the time and one day her mom freaked out and tried to hit her, I stood up and defended her and her mom kicked her out of there house. Me and her lived with my parents ever since. Now that she lived at my parents house I had to basically force her to get a job because all she did was play sims and complain. Especially about me watching game of thrones because of the nudity. when I got home and I thought she needed some purpose. I only bring these thing up to put into perspective the things that I had to forgive and give up to be with her. One day my mom asks us if we’d like to move to Washington in hopes of a better life and she could attend college here. I was thrilled at the idea and she was at that moment too. As the date grew closer and I had already put my two weeks notice in she started getting cold feet. I explained to her that I was miserable at my job and had already given up welding and I was not passing up another opportunity whether she came or not. That ended in a fight but she said she wanted to come in the end. My mom emptied her retirement so we could rent a truck, drive up and have an apartment when we got there (my mom was already here) When got here we both immediately got jobs as a construction labor, making quite good money and her at a drugstore. This is where the problems really began. She started to become very withdrawn. She was not interested in anything sexual, and it began to wear on my confidence. I eventually got a job as an electrician making less money as an apprentice, but more overall when I turned out. Then Covid hit. I got fat and depressed, I got a lot from unemployment. So naturally, I began to drink more. Then I started dabbling in cocaine. Over time this became a problem, I began hiding it doing it on the weekends being out all night sometimes for multiple days. She caught me and I lied. My mental health was deteriorating quickly. I had already suffered with depression before, but this was something different. Her dad got diagnosed with stage bone cancer during this too. It was a rough time for both of us. At one point she told me she didn’t know if she wanted to get a divorce because she wanted to go back home to be with her dad if he died. Even though I understood this crushed me even more. During 2022 I was still somehow I was still somehow still managing to keep it together even with my addiction. She started attending college and work and college at the same time with stressing her out to the point where she was crying so I told her to quit her job and do college full-time. I paid for all of it. Financial burdens began to increase. My mental health dropped even lower. I became increasingly suicidal I thought about death every day. I talked about it every day. She would tell me she’s not a psychiatrist or therapist and that she couldn’t help me. She started hanging out with one of her friends from work and they started hanging out a lot towards the end of 2022. This part is extremely important. I started noticing things on her phone that pointed to her being interested in women like things in her algorithm for TikTok and YouTube. Stuff to do with being lesbian and coming out or bi. I asked her one day if that was something that was going on with her if she was interested in women. She told me no. A month later, she came to me and told me that she thought about it and it was something that she had been thinking about. I told her that it was OK and that it was something that I was willing to let her explore as long as we communicated. Then out of the blue one day again she tells me she didn’t mind if I slept with other women. Looking back this was a red flag at the time. I thought it was OK with it for being with someone else. It turns out I was not. Being a cocaine addict and an alcoholic pretty much plus the thought of her being with someone else started to grind my self-conscious. I became increasingly paranoid that she would leave me. One night fueled on cocaine. I got on her laptop and looked through all of her history all of it back years. And I saw she had to stop obsessing over a guy. Is it OK to have a crush on a guy at the gym while married. I confronted her with this information. And it turned into a huge she said I invaded her privacy which I did and still feel terrible for. And she said it was only a crush and nothing else. Our sex life had all the ground, and I was so hurt that she was attracted to someone else and couldn’t even begin to be attracted to me. One night at the beginning of January, maybe the first week or two I was trying to quit drinking and doing cocaine. I had maybe been a week in. It was the weekend and I didn’t want to be alone. I begged her to stay with me, but she went out with her friend. In retaliation, I suppose I went out with someone a friend of mine and got fucked up. We ended up going back to his place with some girls. There was no sex just making out and such. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I freaked out and got taken home in a cop car. She was at her friends at this point I decided to commit suicide. I overdosed on muscle relaxers with my uncle to tell him bye. My uncle got it out of him that I had overdosed. He called my wife and her and the woman that she was hanging out with came to my house and I was taken to the hospital. I spent a whole week in the hospital. The whole time I was there she just seemed annoyed. She wanted to go back to her friends house and do homework for school. I got out and went back to work. I had to make up some school and the day I was there. I talked to another woman about how I could win her back because she said that she didn’t know if she wanted to be with me anymore. The girls suggested I take her out on a date and tell her how I was feeling and I did. That night while we were eating dinner, she told me that she had been sleeping with that girl the night I tried to commit suicide and other nights. She didn’t tell me she was afraid I would divorce. At first, I remain calm. But as the past, I started to become angry. at home I told her I was leaving to go stay at a friends house because we need to take a break. I started drinking heavily and told her to get the fuck out of my house and I hated her a bunch of other I started drinking heavily and told her to get the fuck out of my house and I hated her a bunch of other terrible things. I went completely off the rails she left with that girl to stay at her house. I bought a bunch of cocaine Adderall and alcohol and was determined to just do drugs until I died. I started self harming. I tried to commit suicide through carbon monoxide, overdose, and hanging. I ruined the house. I broke so many things kicked down doors shattered pictures. You should’ve seen it. It was disgusting. She came by to check on me because she was worried. I was going to kill myself. I can’t remember everything that I said to her, but I know I freaked out. I started throwing things and just being an absolute ass. it culminated her calling my parents. She told him everything. I should also note that during this time I was confused as well with everything going on in my head and thought maybe I would be by and gave a guy a blow job he also gave me one as well. It didn’t last long I wasn’t into it, but I told her the very next day. Had about three months before all this happened. She left again and my mom flew back from Florida. As I sobered up, I began to realize how I had acted. I went to work and immediately told my foreman that I needed to go to rehab. I went to rehab and started to feel better about two months after she had told me and I went to rehab and started to feel better. About two months since the split, we met up at a Starbucks to talk about us. She said that she didn’t think she could be with me anymore. After the way I had acted and all the lying with my addiction. I wanted her back so badly. I told her I’m sorry I was never worth it in a bunch of other stuff that was childish. She said I had acted like her mom and that she couldn’t deal with it. I totally did the yelling throwing things saying horrible things to her to put her down. Anyway, I went no contact with her the whole time she was still living with that girl. I relapsed after about four months. I got laid off from my job. In a few Coke, fueled rages on separate occasions, I would call her and beg her back and then yell at her when she didn’t want to. I called her with cancer and told him that she had cheated on me with a girl. They are very conservative and that was a horrible thing for me to do. So now the end of the tale. I’ve been in and out of sobriety now for this year and a half more in sobriety than out. I’m sober now I’m in AA and NA and feeling much better. Her dad died of cancer. She never told me I heard through a friend of a friend which really hurt me because me and him used to be best friends. Although I understand why she would not reach out to me. Neither me or her have filed the paperwork for the divorce. We just never talk. She has me blocked on Facebook and I don’t know her phone number and honestly right now. I don’t even know if I want to go through with the divorce or just keep working on healing. I’m so confused because I still love her but also I don’t want to be with her but I do. I think about her all the time. I don’t want to break no contact with her. We haven’t spoken in over nine months. I don’t want to open up the wounds for her. If anyone has read this far thank you. I’m typing on my phone so if everything seems rushed and a little sporadic, sorry. I would just like some advice on how maybe I could move forward stay sober and heal from all of this.

We've been friends for a long time, even before you got married. I was among those who shipped you with your current husband. Heck, I even attended your wedding. Throughout the years we've shared details about each other...our sins, our mistakes and our lovelives (several of mine) that we could not tell anyone else.
I noticed I haven't heard from you in a long spell. But I totally get it. Your partner... he never liked me. Despite him knowing who I am... I guess the vibe is there. I never liked him either. And knowing I'm still single... I guess red flags are ringing for him.
As much as I don't like him, I also have to respect the bounds of your marriage to him. As platonic as our relationship has always (and will always be), if he doesn't like it, then you should stay away from me.
I know you get from me the kind of comfort he's unable to provide you. For one, he's a strong willed extrovert who doesn't see things in abstract, while the two of us... we like to sometimes live in our heads and indulge in our fantasies.
It's funny because if only he knew the kind of shit I've been through, and that you're not attracted to me in any way for knowing them, he wouldn't feel so insecure or suspicious. But then again, it's an unusual set up. They say males and females cannot be just friends. While generally true, I truly believe we're the exception. But exceptions are exceptions for a reason due to its rarity and rare things are extremely dubious.
I will not try to reach out to you either. Our friendship has always been dependent on whether you reach out to me or not. I couldn't because again, out of respect for your marriage. But if you do reach out, then I'll be here... unless your husband decides to message me directly to say I could no longer talk to you.
I wouldn't want it to come to that. So if this is your way of avoiding it, well and good. I hope you get the kind of emotional support you used to get from me somehow. Or that you learn to appreciate your husband for who he is. Either way, I understand.
I just let go of my girl (haha I'm still calling her "my girl") and I would have wanted to tell you that. I wonder how you'd react this time? What unusual perspectives you would have given me again? You always made me feel like things aren't as bad as I make them up to be. That things happen for a reason. You never judged me. I think you have a knack for counseling. I hope your husband realizes how lucky he is to have you.

I'm working with this male Cancer coworker who has slightly more expertise.
first, he phoned me late after work yesterday to tell me to send a meeting invite for this morning's meeting with a client. okay, fine, I do it. that's the only thing he asked me to do, btw, so ofc I think he's gonna be in charge of the meeting.
then today, he asks me if I would like to present. he takes over later, and then after a lengthy convo, he asked me if I had noted down the client's points, and that we could discuss and amend the slides later.
??????
I wanted to give him feedback that if the extent of involvement expected of me was greater than just sending a client meeting invite and flashing the slides, that he should have given me prior notice 💢💢💢 How do I do it gently in a way he will understand?
also, wtf is my user flair gone? 😑😑😑 if it has any bearing to the situation at all, I'm a Capricorn rising and sun, Scorpio moon, virgo mars

Throwaway because I don’t know if I’ll ever admit this anyone.
I am in a loving relationship and my partner (Male, 20s) couldn’t be more perfect. He treats me (female, 20s) very well and always has. I’ve been with him happily for many years. We share a mutual friend (male, 20s) that we’ve hung out with for years. Suddenly, I look at our friend and find myself attracted to him. I want to be with hang out with him more, talk to him more, laugh with him more. I can’t pinpoint when or why this started happening, but I hate it. I notice little things about him that I’ve never paid attention to before. I think I genuinely have feelings for him. I don’t know how to process this. My partner has never done anything to hurt me and like I said, he’s amazing. I still love him and am so thankful for him but I can’t shake these thoughts about my best friend. I would never cheat on him and would leave before that would ever happen. I’ll likely never tell him, my partner, or anyone else about these feelings. At the end of the day, the friendship we all have shared means everything to me as they are the family I never had. Hurting anyone would not be worth losing that. I’ve been trying to remain calm and pretend I’m not stressed but I’m so confused and living in my head these days.
I just needed to get this off of my chest

Hello!
30 y/o, male, 5’10” and ~250lbs, no meds, non smoker, rare social drinker (1-2x/yr), only medical problem is NAFLD. Most recent labs show not diabetic, no cholesterol issues, no BP problems. Working on weight loss but not sure if relevant to complaint in this post.
My husband has really bad dandruff and has picked scabs off his scalp before. Today he picked a lump off and we're not sure what it is?
Images: https://ibb.co/album/XDMyFy
He says it doesn't hurt at all (but may feel differently at his next shower). There is a crater on his scalp that I put neosporin on, although he has short prickly hair so his hair fibers won't flatten enough to apply the cream well enough.
The thing (lesion? growth?) he pulled off is white and smooth, has the firmness of a gummy bear. It's not hard like tooth but also not soft like a marshmallow. It's about 6-7mm long. We tried pinching it without bursting it and it feels very dense.
How serious does this look? Cancer? Insect larvae? (puke)
Do we need to save it for a dermatologist to look at? Any advice is appreciated!

Hi! I apologize in advance for the long post. Trigger warnings for mentions of suicide, abuse, and eating disorders (the latter will be very mild).
I (19NB) have been with my girlfriend (20F) for about two and a half years; the relationship started out really well, both of us have prior trauma and struggle with mental health but we were kind of building off of each other for a long time. I went into it very emotionally constipated and as a horrific people pleaser; she went into it very insecure and super scared of me cheating. For the first year to year and a half it was a lot of lifting each other up, she'd reassure me that she'd listen to anything I needed and I reassured her that she would never have to worry about me cheating. There was more to it as well; at least on my side, I had a really bad eating disorder and she was the driving force for me to recover (she always reassured me that she liked my body, preferred for me to be healthy and that it didn't affect her perception of me, etc), was generally really sweet to me in the day-to-day, and was honestly everything I was looking for in a partner up until that point- I'm not someone that is attracted to people based on looks at all (either asexual spectrum or due to sexual trauma when I was a child- I'm also pretty sure I'm neurodivergent but never had the ability to get diagnosed; this will be important later) but she has been the one person I can really say I find attractive. I can think people look "cool" or "interesting" but she's genuinely so beautiful to me in a way that I've never felt for anyone else before. Personality-wise as well, she seemed perfect from the get-go- we always clicked in interactions, she'd reassure me without me asking for it and was interested in everything I had to say, etc. One big thing for me in the beginning was kind of silly but I feel like it's important for me to say; she plays games a lot, and every time we'd call each other and she'd get mad at whatever she was playing she would specifically lower her voice to talk to me. She could be halfway through yelling "what the fuck" at her computer but as soon as I said something to her she'd make herself sound as comforting as possible. This was a really big thing for me; my upbringing was very rough and both of my parents are prone to fits of anger (to the point of it getting physical very often) so I get very uncomfortable when people are visibly angry towards me. This is a big reason why I struggled with people-pleasing; as soon as someone gets upset with me I feel genuine terror, so I would try to avoid it as much as possible. I brought it up once and she said she didn't even realize she did it; the fact that she knew that about me and subconsciously made sure to try not to scare me was such a huge thing I loved about her. I was very used to people taking advantage of the fact that I was bad with boundaries, etc so having her act so comforting towards me with seemingly no ill intentions made me fall really deeply for her.
All of this changed last year- mostly in the summer but it kind of all started with her sleeping through our Valentines Day date. I couldn't even name everything she did but the main theme is that she let her insecurities get ahold of her. She would get upset with me over my clothing choices (stuff like shorts and a t-shirt in summer; it felt really reminiscent to victim blaming, like I must want sex if I wear shorts), literally just having friends, she'd snap at me all the time when she was slightly frustrated over her games (remember what I said earlier), literally anything became a reason for her to get horrifically angry at me. It was around this time that I decided to look into her prior dating history more and I learned pretty quickly that she used to be a serial cheater in different relationships (although her partners were really badly abusive and they cheated first, so I didn't think of it as a dealbreaker). She stopped reassuring me or speaking to me nicely, and also had a really big issue of doing things "back" (if I did anything that made her insecure, she'd do it 10x worse instead of talking to me about it). I mentioned having a side Reddit account once (this one) and she made a private Twitter and added all of her friends onto it except for me, and didn't tell me about it, just posted screenshots of it until I put 2 and 2 together. She also got upset after finding out that the person that groomed me is a trans girl (she's a trans girl too) and would ask me questions about whether I liked her (MY GROOMER!!!!!!!!) better. She'd do this stuff and then, when questioned about it, start agreeing with me and calling herself "undateable", etc, so I'd reassure her that she wasn't and ask her to "carry" the relationship for a bit since I thought she understood my side; by this I just meant being extra nice to me for a week or so (like when dudes get in a fight with their girlfriend and buy them flowers and talk to them more sweetly for awhile, not anything crazy), but I never really got that from her. Everything came to a head when she texted me saying she "couldn't do this anymore" and sent me a bunch of screenshots of her friendgroup telling her I was "just like her exes", "a master manipulator" etc. Their main reasons for the accusations were that I was "too secretive" (which I really don't think is true; I tend to want some baseline privacy in a relationship but she didn't even allow me that much- she'd join any public Discord servers I mentioned being in and told her I'd rather she didn't join on alts, etc, and even told me the stuff she'd find me saying wasn't bad and she was happy about it) and "accuse her of cheating too much", which.. Really. My side was honestly mostly just asking for reassurance since she completely stopped giving me it, her side was literally driving me to cut off all of my friends other than four people because I was scared she'd get upset with me again and also led to feel intense guilt for talking to. This whole thing also happened within a month of both my most recent suicide attempt (I had been going through a lot) and my parents wanting to kick me out (my mom is very mentally unwell and convinced herself that I had been prostituting myself- definitely not true to any degree. It got to the point where I had someone I decided to stay with and all my bags were packed). We didn't end up breaking up at this point.
So, fast forward to this year. She stopped doing a lot of the worse behaviors directly but we've still been fighting. My dad had been getting sicker and sicker- he already was pretty bad but he refused to see a doctor because my mom convinced him doctors are evil, the government made COVID in a lab!!!!, etc. It got to the point where he was slurring all his words, hallucinating, and unable to stand, and my mom called my out-of-state uncle who called an ambulance. I was, obviously, on my uncle's side, my mom was hysterical saying that the hospital is going to kill him and I'm with them, but my dad was stable at least. It turned out he had multiple small strokes. They did bloodwork and he's HIV+. They ended up diagnosing him with AIDs and dementia.
My relationship with my dad is very, very, very complicated. He was always the "better" parent but a horrible parent on his own. He'd agree with me in private but defend my mom whenever she was in the room, and as her mental health got worse he believed everything she told him. He used to tell me he'd leave her and take me with him, that he knew she was horrible and he never wanted her to do what she did to me, etc, but he still supported her. When things got bad between us he was a perpetrator as well. More recently he stopped trying to appeal to me at all and just entirely took her side on everything. I couldn't deal with any of it- I didn't have a room for a long, long time (I think until I was 15 or 16?) but as soon as I got one I just started locking myself in all day. I love my dad, but all he ever did was disappoint me. I couldn't bear to see him let himself get destroyed by my mom, and I just kind of decided not to- so this situation has been fucking me UP. He's currently fully conscious, my uncle flew over for a bit and had to fly back since he has kids but my dad fully took my mom's side, is refusing medications, etc. My mom and my uncle have been fighting over me constantly. I don't really want to do any of this shit but I have to, because as much as my dad let me down I don't want him to die. I was in the hospital all day and night for the first few days, I had to sleep on the benches in the emergency room waiting room since my dad was in a male room and they wouldn't allow me to stay past visiting hours. I was constantly pulling aside doctors and nurses and telling them to listen to me because my mom was trying to convince them he was just in there because he was "exhausted" or "wouldn't eat enough" and constantly lying about his condition. My uncle has good intentions but he's kind of heavy handed with certain stuff; he wants me to move in with him (I want to as well but you can imagine it's a tricky situation) and he always asks me to choose a side when they fight. My mom has been trying to convince me he's a rapist- I usually try to believe victims, but she also tried to tell me that I'm a prostitute, and she's definitely not a reliable person to listen to. I'm kind of just at an in-between where I don't believe her but I can't feel fully comfortable around him either since I have some bad past experiences surrounding that kind of thing.
About four days after my dad got hospitalized (?) and about a week and a half before my 19th birthday, my girlfriend texts me to tell me she's too exhausted to be with me anymore. The main reason was that I was constantly upset between the way the relationship was going and my dad being in the hospital. We worked something out but it's just been downhill since then, I can't be upset around her over anything without her turning it into a fight (literally while I am in the middle of crying, about how I get upset too much). As for the more recent weeks, she has completely stopped giving me ANYTHING- forget reassurance, she barely says I love you anymore, responds to long text messages with one sentence, etc. Her justification for this is that she feels unsafe with me. Her reasoning for this is:

1. I have had a habit of liking posts that made her insecure. This is where the lack of looks-based attraction comes in. I tend to like posts without really thinking about it too much, and sometimes I like thirst traps without realizing, since I'm not someone that thirsts after people like that. If I see someone in a cool outfit dancing it's going to be hard for me to say "this is a thirst trap" because I'm not thinking about it like that, I'm just going to see it and think "wow, cool outfit" and like the post. Then she'll see it and get upset with me. This is something I've been working on and cut down to a large degree, but certain stuff gets past me (photoshoots with a set concept, etc). She has tried to tell me that I DO actually experience looks-based attraction, which is kind of crazy because I know what I experience so she can't convince me otherwise ??? I don't know. I've also told her to send me any post that I liked that makes her insecure so I can learn what I have to look out for better, but she doesn't really do that, and I can't really know what'll make her upset unless she tells me. This is also an issue that SHE HAS AS WELL
   
2. She looked through one of my friend's followings and found a bunch of model's accounts, and says it's disrespectful that I "hang out with porn addicts". She plays Osu and is active in the community. Also has an issue with another one of my friends that I met on a Roblox bar game (she has worded it like I was literally giving out my contact at a real life bar, which I would understand being uncomfortable with, but dude it's literally Roblox). Also considers it a huge breach of trust that I mentioned getting gender envy from a Twitter mutual (I know how chronically online all of this sounds and I'm sorry). She'll ask me "isn't that a trans girl", "are they assigned male at birth" about my friends which is kind of just crazy? I don't know. I don't have a history of serially dating trans women or anything like that other than the groomer (which I don't think should count??????????) and I used to identify as lesbian for years- most of my exes are FTM and transitioned after dating me, which also shouldn't really matter??? I just think her fixation on me cheating on her with someone that's AMAB is kind of weird and unprompted
   

So I'm at a point where any time I ask her for ANYTHING it's just met with the response of her not being comfortable with me anymore. I can't hang out with any of my friends without her looking through their whole history and finding something about them that makes me "basically a cheater" for befriending them. I had to distance myself from a very close friend because of her once because he said "it's like we're one and the same" to me, and that if we went to a shitty hangout spot he'd still enjoy it "because it's me". She tells me to this day that remembering this stuff makes her physically sick but it truly was just innocent friendly conversation- we're both South Asian, like a lot of the same games, and have issues with abusive parents so we got along really well, and that was also why he said the thing about us being similar. I've been asking her over and over what I can do to make her feel better but she won't give me an answer.
She also told me today that I was bringing up her sexual trauma and that she's currently repulsed by the idea of sex altogether- I asked her why and she said it was because of the reasons I gave above. I'm at a loss. I'm clearly very fed up with this whole thing but I still am attached to her and love her a lot, and I definitely don't think I can go through a breakup right now with everything else going on in my life, even though you could argue it's like we already broke up. I really just don't know. It's been horrible watching her go from the perfect partner to this huge ball of insecurity and I don't know how to fix it nor how to let go. I don't have a lot of options, either- I've been almost completely socially isolated since I was a middle schooler, my parents pulled me out of public school and had me doing dual enrollment community college/homeschool. I don't have a strong support system at all, I can't get a therapist, I'm not allowed to get a job, the list just goes on and on and everything kind of just points to me being fucked

III. Changing Modes of Making It: From Horatio Alger to the Happy Hooker
…
From “Self-Culture” to Self-Promotion through “Winning Images”
In the nineteenth century, the ideal of self-improvement degenerated into a cult of compulsive industry. P.T. Barnum, who made a fortune in a calling the very nature of which the Puritans would have condemned (“Every calling, whereby God will be Dishonored; every Calling whereby none but the Lusts of men are Nourished: …every such Calling is to be Rejected”), delivered many times a lecture frankly entitled “The Art of Money-Getting,” which epitomized the nineteenth-century conception of worldly success. Barnum quoted freely from Franklin but without Franklin’s concern for the attainment of wisdom or the promotion of useful knowledge. “Information” interested Barnum merely as a means of mastering the market. Thus he condemned the “false economy” of the farm wife who douses her candle at dusk rather than lighting another for reading, not realizing that the “information” gained through reading is worth far more than the price of the candles. “Always take a trustworthy newspaper,” Barnum advised young men on the make, “and thus keep thoroughly posted in regard to the transactions of the world. He who is without a newspaper is cut off from his species.”
Barnum valued the good opinion of others not as a sign of one’s usefulness but as a means of getting credit. “Uncompromising integrity of character is invaluable.” The nineteenth century attempted to express all values in monetary terms. Everything had its price. Charity was a moral duty because “the liberal man will command patronage, which the sordid, uncharitable miser will be avoided.” The sin of pride was not that it offended God but that it led to extravagant expenditures. “A spirit of pride and vanity, when permitted to have full sway, is the undying cankerworm which gnaws the very vitals of a man’s worldly possessions.”
The eighteenth century made a virtue of temperance but did not condemn moderate indulgence in the service of sociability. “Rational conversation,” on the contrary, appeared to Franklin and his contemporaries to represent an important value in its own right. The nineteenth century condemned sociability itself, on the grounds that it might interfere with business. “How many good opportunities have passed, never to return, while a man was sipping a ‘social glass’ with his friends!” Preachments on self-help now breathed the spirit of compulsive enterprise. Henry Ward Beecher defined “the beau ideal of happiness” as a state of mind in which “a man [is] so busy that he does not know whether he is or is not happy.” Russell Sage remarked that “work has been the chied, and you might say, the only source of pleasure in my life.”
Even at the height of the Gilded Age, however, the Protestant ethic did not completely lose its original meaning. In the success manuals, the McGuffey readers, the Peter Parley Books, and the hortatory writings of the great capitalists themselves, the Protestant virtues - industry, thrift, temperance - still appeared not merely as stepping-stones to success but as their own reward.
The spirit of self-improvement lived on, in debased form, in the cult of “self-culture” - proper care and training of mind and body, nurture of the mind through “great books,” development of “character.” The social contribution of individual accumulation still survived as an undercurrent in the celebration of success, and the social conditions of early industrial capitalism, in which the pursuit of wealth undeniably increased the supply of useful objects, gave some substance to the claim that “accumulated capital means progress.” In condemning speculation and extravagance, in upholding the importance of patient industry, in urging young men to start at the bottom and submit to “the discipline of daily life,” even the most unabashed exponents of self-enrichment clung to the notion that wealth derives its value from its contribution to the general good and to the happiness of future generations.
The nineteenth-century cult of success placed surprisingly little emphasis on competition. It measured achievement not against the achievements of others but against an abstract ideal of discipline and self-denial. At the turn of the century, however, preachments on success began to stress the will to win. The bureaucratization of the corporate career changed the conditions of self-advancement; ambitious young men now had to compete with their peers for the attention and approval of their superiors. The struggle to surpass the previous generation and to provide for the next gave way to a form of sibling rivalry, in which men of approximately equal abilities jostled against each other in competition for a limited number of places. Advancement now depended on “will-power, self-confidence, energy, and initiative” - the qualities celebrated in such exemplary writings as George Lorimer’s Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son. ” By the end of the nineteenth century,” writes John Cawelti in his study of the success myth, “self-help books were dominated by the ethos of sales-manship and boosterism. Personal magnetism, a quality which supposedly enabled a man to influence and dominate others, became one of the major keys to success.” In 1907, both Lorimer’s Saturday Evening Post and Orison Swett Marden’s Success magazine inaugurated departments of instruction in the “art of conversation,” fashion, and “culture.” The management of interpersonal relations came to be seen as the essence of self-advancement. The captain of industry gave way to the confidence man, the master of impressions. Young men were told that they had to sell themselves in order to succeed.
At first, self-testing through competition remained almost in-distinguishable from moral self-discipline and self-culture, but the difference became unmistakable when Dale Carnegie and then Norman Vincent Peale restated and transformed the tradition of Mather, Franklin, Barnum, and Lorimer. As a formula for success, winning friends and influencing people had little in common with industry and thrift. The prophets of positive thinking disparaged “the old adage that hard work alone is the magic key that will unlock the door to our desires.” They praised the love of money, officially condemned even by the crudest of Gilded Age materialists, as a useful incentive. “You can never have riches in great quantities,” wrote Napoleon Hill in this Think and Grow Rich,” unless you can work yourself into a white heat of desire for money.” The pursuit of wealth lost the few shreds of moral meaning that still clung to it. Formerly the Protestant virtues appeared to have an independent value of their own. Even when they became purely instrumental, in the second half of the nineteenth century, success itself retained moral and social overtones, by virtue of its contribution to the sum of human comfort and progress. Now success appeared as an end in its own right, the victory over your competitors that alone retained the capacity to instill a sense of self-approval. The latest success manuals differ from earlier ones - even surpassing the cynicism of Dale Carnegie and Peale - in their frank acceptance of the need to exploit and intimidate others, in their lack of interest in the substance of success, and in the candor with which they insist that appearances - “winning images - count for more than performance, ascription for more than achievement. One author seems to imply that the self consists of little more than its “image” reflected in others’ eyes. “Although I’m not being original when I say it, I’m sure you’ll agree that the way you see yourself will reflect the image you portray to others.” Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
<The American Religion by Harold Bloom (California Orphism)>
The Apotheosis of Individualism
The fear that haunted the social critics and theorists of the fifties - that rugged individualism had succumbed to conformity and “love-pressure sociability” - appears in retrospect to have been premature. In 1960, David Riesman complained that young people no longer had much social “presence,” their education having provided them not with “a polished personality but [with] an affable, casual, adaptable one, suitable to the losing organizations of an affluent society.” It is true that “a present-oriented hedonism,” as Riseman went on the argue, has replaced the work ethic “among the very classes which in the earlier stages of industrialization were oriented toward the future, toward distant goals and delayed gratification.” But this hedonism is a fraud; the pursuit of pleasure disguises a struggle for power. Americans have not really become more sociable and cooperative, as the theorists of other-direction and conformity would like us to believe; they have merely become more adept at exploiting the conventions of interpersonal relations for their own benefit. Activities ostensibly undertaken purely for enjoyment often have the real object of doing others in. It is symptomatic of the underlying tenor of American life that vulgar terms for sexual intercourse also convey the sense of getting the better of someone, working him over, taking him in, imposing your will through guile, deception, or superior force. Verbs associated with sexual pleasure have acquired more than the usual overtones of violence and psychic exploitation. In the violent world of the ghetto, the language of which now pervades American society as a whole, the violence associated with sexual intercourse is directed with special intensity by men against women, specifically against their mothers. The language of ritualized aggression and abuse reminds those who use it that exploitation is the general rule and some form of dependence the common fate, that “the individual,” in Lee Rainwater’s words, “is not strong enough or adult enough to achieve his goal in a legitimate way, but is rather like a child, dependent on others who tolerate his childish maneuvers”; accordingly males, even adult males, often depend on women for support and nurture. Many of them have to pimp for a living, ingratiating themselves with a woman in order to pry money from her; sexual relations thus become manipulative and predatory. Satisfaction depends on taking what you want instead of waiting for what is rightfully yours to receive. All this enters everyday speech in language that connects sex with aggression and sexual aggression with highly ambivalent feelings about mothers.
In some ways middle-class society has become a pale copy of the black ghetto, as the appropriation of its language would lead us to believe. We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition, the most important feature of which is a widespread loss of confidence in the future. The poor have always had to live for the present, but now a desperate concern for personal survival, sometimes disguised as hedonism, engulfs the middle class as well. Today almost everyone lives in a dangerous world from which there is little escape. International terrorism and blackmail, bombings, and hijackings arbitrarily affect the rich and poor alike. Crime, violence, and gang wars make cities unsafe and threaten to spread to the suburbs. Racial violence on the streets and in the schools creates an atmosphere of chronic tension and threatens to erupt at any time into full-scale racial conflict. Unemployment spreads from the poor the white-collar class, while inflation eats away the savings of those who hoped to retire in comfort. Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security. The propaganda of death and destruction, emanating ceaselessly from the mass media, adds to the prevailing atmosphere of insecurity. Far-flung famines, earthquakes in remote regions, distant wars and uprisings attract the same attention as events closer to home. The impression of arbitrariness in the reporting of disaster reinforces the arbitrary quality of experience itself, and the absence of continuity in the coverage of events, as today’s crisis yields to a new and unrelated crisis tomorrow, adds to the sense of historical discontinuity - the sense of living in a world in which the past holds out no guidance to the present and the future has become completely unpredictable.
Older conceptions of success presupposed a world in rapid motion, in which fortunes were rapidly won and lost and new opportunities unfolded every day. Yet they also presupposed a certain stability, a future that bore some recognizable resemblance to the present and the past. The growth of bureaucracy, the cult of consumption with its immediate gratifications, but above all the severance of the sense of historical continuity have transformed the Protestant ethic while carrying the underlying principles of capitalist society to their logical conclusion . The pursuit of self-interest, formerly identified with the rational pursuit of gain and the accumulation of wealth, has become a search for pleasure and psychic survival. Social conditions now approximate the vision of republican society conceived by the Marquis de Sade at the very outset of the republican epoch. In many ways the most farsighted and certainly the most disturbing of the prophets of revolutionary individualism, Sade defended unlimited self-indulgence as the logical culmination of the revolution in property relations - the only way to attain revolutionary brotherhood in its purest form. By regressing in his writings to the most primitive level of fantasy, Sade uncannily glimpsed the whole subsequent development of personal life under capitalism, ending not in revolutionary brotherhood but in a society of siblings that has outlived and repudiated its revolutionary origins.
Sade imagined a sexual utopia in which everyone has the right to everyone else, where human beings, reduced to their sexual organs, become absolutely anonymous and interchangeable. His ideal society thus reaffirmed the capitalist principle that human beings are ultimately reducible to interchangeable objects. It also incorporated and carried to a surprising new conclusion Hobbes’s discovery that the destruction of paternalism and the subordination of all social relations to the market had stripped away the remaining restraints and the mitigating illusions from the war of all against all. In the resulting state of organized anarchy, as Sade was the first to realize, pleasure becomes life’s only business - pleasure, however, that is indistinguishable from rape, murder, unbridled aggression. In a society that has reduced reason to mere calculation, reason can impose no limits on the pursuit of pleasure - on the immediate gratification of every desire no matter how perverse, insane, criminal, or merely immoral. For the standards that would condemn crime or cruelty derive from religion, compassion, or the kind of reason that rejects purely instrumental applications; and none of these outmoded forms of thought or feeling has any logical place in a society based on commodity production. In his misogyny, Sade perceived that bourgeois enlightenment, carried to its logical conclusions, condemned even the sentimental cult of womanhood and the family, which the bourgeoisie itself had carried to unprecedented extremes.
At the same time, he saw that condemnation of “woman-worship” had to go hand in hand with a defense of woman’s sexual rights - their right to dispose of their own bodies, as feminists would put it today. If the exercise of that right in Sade’s utopia boils down to the duty to become an instrument of someone else’s pleasure, it was not so much because Sade hated women as because he hated humanity. He perceived, more clearly than the feminists, that all freedoms under capitalism come in the end to the same thing, the same universal obligation to enjoy and be enjoyed. In the same breath, and without violating his own logic, Sade demanded for women the right “fully to satisfy all their desires” and “all parts of their bodies” and categorically stated that “all women must submit to our pleasure.” Pure individualism thus issued in the most radical repudiation of individuality. “All men, all women resemble each other,” according to Sade; and to those of his countrymen who would become republicans he adds this ominous warning: “Do not think you can make good republicans so long as you isolated in their families the children who should belong to the republic alone.” The bourgeois defense of privacy culminates - not just in Sade’s thought but in the history to come, so accurately foreshadowed in the very excess, madness, infantilism of his ideas - in the most thoroughgoing attack on privacy; the glorification of the individual, in his annihilation.
<…>
Standing-Reserve.
Note a lack of the “Greek” in Lasch.
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 by Georges Bataille, Edited by A. Stoekl, Translated by A. Stoekl, C.R. Lovitt, and D.M. Leslie Jr.
<…>

Im a 21yo male muslim , i pray and fast and do everything that allah tell us to do hamdollah, but im gay , and im trying so hard not be , no matter how hard i try i cant find women attractive, but if i see a handsome man ill fall for him . Please tell me what should i do i have tried everything i do not want to be gay and im disgusted of myself

Intro:
Today I am reviewing what I believe to be the most disappointing Dhar Mann video of all time. It had potential, I was invested... then Dhar Mann just completely fumbled it. Expect me to get more scathing and frustrated as this review goes on.
This is also a weird twilight zone moment because Azeem, who famously salvages bad Dhar Mann videos, is one of the main contributors to what made this video awful (His character I mean, not Azeem himself).
Review:
Our story begins in the school theatre. Auditions are happening, and our titular dorky girl, Julie (Cecily Dowd), nails it. She does so well, in fact, that the heads of the drama club close up all remaining auditions for that role. That's pretty fucking mean if you ask me. Next up is our titular hot guy, Chase, a jock who hates being a jock. His audition sucks, and the coaches tell him that he's not getting the role.
What the fuck is going on here? Cutting off an audition early is one thing, but outright telling somebody they're not getting the part??? This is like the inverse problem with the tryouts for Bookside's Football team I covered last week. Between this and dismissing all people who haven't auditioned for Julie's role yet, this is super unprofessional.
Disheartened, Chase goes to the back of the theatre to sit with his unnamed narc friends (Azeem Vecchio and Nathan Ing. Knowing that it's these two good actors in this role makes this video just...). We learn that Chase knows he sucks, but he needs to get a role, otherwise his dad will make him play baseball again. We get a namedrop of Chase's bitch of a girlfriend, who blew him off to go shopping. Julie comes by and gives her condolences to Chase. Once she walks away, the narc friends make fun of her, and Chase gets a call from Bitch bitching about shopping or some bullshit. She verbally abuses him and also insists that he sticks to baseball.
Wow, a sympathetic protagonist! This is rare in Dhar Mann. Chase is a good guy, but he's manipulated by an abusive dad and a controlling girlfriend. It doesn't help that his friends suck too.
We cut to lunchtime at school the next day, and typical Dhar Mann plot contrivances occur. The male lead (the role Chase tried out for) turned down the part because he got cast on Broadway... you didn't have to go that far for an excuse Dhar Mann lmao. Oh but the contrivance gets even worse, because apparently the directors are giving Julie full power over who the male lead will be... Excuse me?
Why are the directors letting some random student decide this? This is especially contrived considering we saw how unprofessional and absolutist they were earlier... what the fuck. Anyway, narc friends pressure Chase into doing yet another bad thing: manipulating Julie into casting him by pretending to be romantically interested. This is made even worse by the fact that Julie has had a crush on Chase since they were little. That's fucked up, narc friends. They at least made Chase sympathetic enough to understand why he went along with this.
I have to give it to Chase here, because he doesn't outright ask Julie for the role or even pressure her to give it to him. He approaches her asking to help him get better. He's sincere in his compliments to her about how great her singing and acting is. He gets her number, and they arrange to hangout and practice together. So far, Chase isn't in the wrong yet.
We cut to the next day, in the theatre, where Chase is auditioning by reading a scene with Julie. Once again, I have to give a Dhar Mann video credit on something. It's annoying how his videos always repeat the message of the video word for word, but here, the message is stated in a fictional play that these are reciting. That's a bit more clever if you ask me, and MUCH more tolerable. Nevertheless, the directors are not impressed with Chase. They ask to speak with Julie in private... why? They've already been so mean to Chase right to his face, why hold back now lmao. In any case, the directors really don't like Chase, and Julie, at least for a moment, begrudgingly resolves to tell him he's not getting the part.
Julie tries to let Chase down lightly, and this is where Chase finally enters "in the wrong" territory. In a last ditch effort to keep his shot at landing this role, he lies to Julie by telling her that he likes her. Leaning on somebody who likes you to improve at something? Sure. Having them help you audition with their endorsement? Fine. Lying to them to manipulate them into nepotism? That's wrong and messed up. He even lies to Julie and tells her that him and Bitch broke up. Unfortunately, Julie falls for all of this, and overrides the director's decision.
We cut to Chase hanging out with Bitch at some salon. She never shuts the fuck up until Chase mentions Julie in passing. Chase... buddy... you fuck up here... He tells Bitch about his master plan to manipulate Julie. Why do characters in Dhar Mann snitch on themselves so fucking much?!
Julie and Chase are reading lines that mimic their situation a little too closely. That in itself is fine, I just reaaaally hope that they don't break the 4th wall (and insult our intelligence) by acknowledging this. Chase and Julie start genuinely bonding and it's actually an immersive romance for once. They find out they have so much in common and we see a spark form. Even having watched this before, I genuinely forgot about Chase's plan. For the first time, ever, Chase is realizing that Bitch doesn't even remotely care about him the same way that Julie does.
For once, I actually enjoy a montage. The music actually fits, and we see a lot of cute romantic moments. It's so heartwarming, in a way that Dhar Mann videos fail to tug at my heartstrings. Like I said, I was sooooo invested in this video and it had so much potential.
We cut to the day of the show, and Chase's narc friends... oh, right, these clowns still exist... they sneak backstage and support Chase... sort of. They don't congratulate him on a job well done, they congratulate him on manipulating Julie and talk mad shit about her... like why don't you guys just fuck off and get a life already? They leave, and Julie walks, with a massive glowup! Literally every other Dhar Mann character glowup sucks except for this one. Not only are 99% of the now "hot" people at the very median of the bell-curve, but even IF they actually were that attractive, NOBODY reacts irl with the hyperbolic drooling that Dhar Mann characters do. This glow up works because they don't put Julie on a pedestal, nobody ogles her, and nobody suddenly acts really nice to her. It's a much more realistic, Chase tells her she's beautiful, and that's it.
Chase and Julie absolutely knock it out of the park on stage, and the crowd goes wild! This is the only time I recall getting shivers from a video in a Dhar Mann video. The chemistry is so real, for one and one time only in Dhar Mann! Backstage again, Chase and Julie share a romantic moment, but they're still in intermission, so Julie leaves momentarily.
We are at 17 minutes of this 22 minute video. It was good for 17 minutes. These last 5 minutes are all completely fucking downhill... Dhar Mann absolutely FUMBLED this video in the remaining time!!!!
I genuinely stopped writing and watching for a minute to brace myself for how enraged I am going to get from this point out...
Narc friends sneak back stage again and... how does this keep happening?! And sure they tell him he's awesome and all, which is new, but other than that, they give the EXACT FUCKING SAME exposition that they did before the play started. Even in the context of this story, why? Why do this again? Oh, and they don't just loudly announce Chase's plan quietly among themseleves, they fucking declare this shit so loud that the entire world can hear. Including Julie...
Julie is obviously devastated, but what's even worse is that the narc friends just fucking skedaddle. Some fucking friends, right? They seriously left Chase alone to endure Julie's wrath. Even IF they don't know that Chase developed genuine feelings for Julie, isn't it still in their best interest to help Chase so he doesn't have to play baseball again?! At the very very very very least, the friends should say something like "dont blame Chase! He's a good guy, this was all our idea and we put him up to it!" but no. They just take off. No retribution. No consequences. Nothing. Chase gets the entirety of the rage and the blame.
The whole "I was using you at first but grew to actually like you" trope is something common in Dhar Mann. Dhar has made complete assholes get off scot-free and have a happy ending. Here you have a genuine guy who made a mistake and knows it, and he gets the absolute worst of it.
Oh, it gets even worse though... because in another extreme coincidence, this is THE ONE AND ONLY TIME that Bitch decides to care about Chase's life, and show up backstage (HOW ARE SO MANY AUDIENCE MEMBERS GOING BACK DURING INTERMISSION???) to give PDA right in front of Julie. Bitch literally says right in front of Julie "Why is she crying? Did she find out you were just pretending to like her?" Like holy fuck this is overkill! You don't need to narc on Chase this goddamn much!
Despite everything I just said post the 17 minute mark... This video had one more chance for redemption. Dhar Mann could have, and came soooooo close to redeeming this mess... I have to brace myself once again.
In the second half of the show, Julie's tone is much more scathing, while Chase's is completely timid. Usually I hate when, in fiction, people resolve their conflicts on stage by "being themselves", but here... it works. Chase breaks character and gives a sincere, honest apology and plea for forgiveness. I know I've used this phrase a lot, but it is such a heartfelt moment. If any character in Dhar Mann ever deserved forgiveness and a second chance for being genuinely repentant, it is Chase. Hell, even the entire damn audience is rooting for Chase and wants Julie to forgive and embrace him!
20 minute mark. 2 minutes remain, and we just had another peak moment after a valley, so surely this video can't fuck it up... right?
Julie runs off stage and the director calls an impromptu intermission. But then we cut to the next day at school... What? No! You can't just not tell us what happened the rest of the night and what became of the show!
Chase goes up to Julie at her locker with a gift of their favorite food. Chase tells Julie that he broke up with Madison, much to Julie's indifference. Chase is wearing a "so you see..." backpack by the way... Dhar Mann was INTENT on ruining this video holy shit.
Julie tells Chase that she talked to the director and they have decided to recast Chase's rol- HUH?! What??? What the fuck do you mean recast his role?? They JUST HAD the show!!! What do you mean for the rest of the run? That's not how school plays work. And no, there's no bullshit about it just going on a few more days of this weekend, because Julie specifically says that she can't bring herself to dance with Chase EVERY weekend!
I started banging my head into my desk once Julie said "Did you not learn anything from the show? Like my character says: The truth doesn't cost you-" AHHHH fuck off. The one and only time you had a somewhat clever way of veiling the message of the video, you had to fuck it up Dhar Mann by having her just outright point to the intended message... Julie takes the food and walks away. The end.
Outro:
...yes... that's actually how they decided to end this. What the fucking fuck? This is so incredibly anticlimactic and absolutely nothing is resolved. Chase is still under the abuse of his dad, his narc friends are off scot free, and Julie is still crushed. Dhar Mann has redeemed absolutely irredeemable scumbags and given happy endings to sociopaths, but Chase of all characters ends up with an EVEN SHITTIER life than how the video started?! This is even worse with the next suggested video being Anna from "Nerds Get Revenge on Cool Teens", an absolute fucking cunt of character who gets off scot-free and suffers no penalties for the shitty things she does INCLUDING USING SOMEBODY ROMANTICALLY, which she neither regrets nor suffers repercussions for. Just get the fuck out of my face already. Fuck this video, fuck the suggested video, and fuck Dhar Mann for ruining one of the only potentially good videos he ever made.
Sorry for how heated I got in this review. I can assure you that no other video even comes close to disappointing me on this level. It just... you know what, nevermind, I've said everything I need to say.
See you all next week for another review! Leave any recommendations below!

The context is I am, what I thought was, a bisexual man. I have been married to my wife for over 5 years and I love her that is something that cannot be mistaken. The love has just changed over the years. I have become separate emotionally although I still love her its not romantic. I have always found the female body beautiful, but I do not find it "sexy" anymore. I used to want to have a baby with my significant other once I became an adult especially one that is of my own genes as it aligned with my held beliefs. Now I am older and things have changes. I find I cannot find women attractive anymore. I find I cannot stand being intimate with my wife. I find I have the most beautiful feelings about the male figure and I love it. I find that we do not agree on many fundamental things and we don't have any traditional issues a couple has if any issues. Over the years I have been trying to separate from her as I wasn't sure of me. I know I love her. I know I never want to see her hurt and I know I am not looking forward to being the person to hurt her. She is my everything, but I am not what I thought I was. I fantasize about being held by a man every night. Sometimes that's the only way I can get to sleep. I have panic attacks everyday because I feel like something is wrong. For more information I have been diagnosed with severe depression and generalized anxiety and I take pills for it all. The question I am asking here is. How can I come out and be me while separating and dividing my home evenly with my wife and showing her the utmost respect for her being and life. I cannot stand living everyday as if it's a lie. We do not have children, but not for my trying. We do own a house together. I need help please any advice.
Thank you to anyone who commented early I'm still scared but I feel weak and cannot come to terms right now I'm going to sleep on it an prepare for the news breaking