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I think, tell him once when you’re both calm that the combination of not being invited when he went to see this friend and seeing him get all dressed up nice for it like he would for you on date night triggered some sad and insecure feelings in you (you’re flagging that the situation upset you, not him). Ask him if, going forward, can he please invite you to things even if it’s very likely you won’t accept the invitation. It might sound silly but it’s the different between feeling included and feeling excluded. It might be good to include here that you imagine in his shoes he may have been discouraged from inviting you places because you decline or try it and don’t enjoy yourself and you understand why he would skip the invitation and go straight to catching up with friend. (Being able to empathise with your partner is really important for long term harmony. I hope he empathises with you too). The time to get upset and reconsider if this is the right guy for you would be after you’ve had this calm conversation (assuming he agrees to to that going forward) if he then defaults back to not inviting you. And in this case like you say, that lack of invite might be pure scatterbrained ness, highly likely in fact. But if his scatter brained ness triggers sad insecure feelings in you he might not be the best match for you even though the love is there. Good luck navigating this.

A couple of threads here. Thread one: practice discipline. You know that the aggregate score of pursueing this activity is misery so be disciplined and don’t indulge. Different but the same, I get anxious when people don’t reply to my messages. I can open my conversation with and check for a read receipt. If I can see they haven’t even read the message yet I feel relief, if I can see they have and they’re just not replying I feel miserable. If I fight my anxiety urge and refuse to open the conversation to check I won’t feel worse. I have to use will power to achieve that. Same with over eating. I want to eat that second serve of food. I’ll feel good if I eat that second serve of food. I don’t feel satisfied yet, I want it! But I’ll gain more body fat. I have the Choi r to be disciplined and not eat the second serve. The other thread is to do with identification with your form. Eckhart Tolle would say you are strongly identified with your form, a form which possesses x, y, z characteristics. In order for you to remain identified you have to force other people into roles that compliment that identity. You believe you will be rejected so other people have to be the rejectors. But really, we are not our forms, we are beings play acting out a myriad of roles, and those roles aren’t fixed. If you have the time to spare read a new earth by Eckhart Tolle, he’ll explain the idea in much more detail than I could.

My housemate is an alcoholic. He says ‘I drink because I want to’. We all hold him at arms length because he is not pleasant company when drunk. I guess it’s true, if you don’t care you are hardly going to deny yourself what you perceive as pleasure because someone else says you should. But what ever it is you’re trying to medicate, alcohol won’t fix it. Why not address the underlying cause?

What you say is you’re very fond of him (if this is true), but your romantic feelings have faded and being his partner doesn’t feel right anymore. You’re very sorry but it’s over.

Late to the party and haven’t had a chance to read all the posts but from way up thread when you said you can’t stop yourself from having these thoughts. This is true. Don’t even try. What you can do, is observe that you are having the thought, and then direct your attention to to something else. Your breathing, the feel of your clothes on your skin, the sound of things happening around you, hold your hands up and close your eyes. With your eyes closed how do you know that they are still there? I’ve been seeing lately that it takes 90 seconds for the physical effects of a bad feeling to pass through the body. So you see that couple, you think that thought, you feel the feeling that comes with it. And if you can just pause there for 90 seconds, watching your breathing, asking yourself what can I perceive around me, that feeling will pass. The alternative is to think more about that thought, that’s like feeding a fire, your mind will stay focussed on the damn unfairness of it all, your body will stay amped up, you’ll stay miserable. co sign get the hell away from the manosphere. It’s an echo chamber that amplifies misery. https://gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/reply-all/76h59o

That’s a pretty substantial let down (your housing security as well as your sense of connection with her). You have all of my commiserations. As to what to do, if you can strive to accept what is, and set your course of action accordingly, I think you’ll recover from this heart break quicker. (That is to say, when you’re safely secure in a room of your own in a house you found by yourself, whole house or share house, both are valid options, you’ll feel better than you do currently). The advice about finding a way to parent yourself is also very, very good. It sucks to have to but the great thing about growing up is, we can.

Until she can find love for herself, trying to grow a partnership with her will be like making a rope out of sand (that is to say, utterly futile. If she doesn’t love herself she’s going to lose respect for people who love her. Like what is wrong with you that you can’t see all the things she sees wrong with herself?! ) I’m really sorry, the heart doesn’t love any less, even when the person we love is not in a good mental place to form and sustain a romantic connection.

This has been a valuable set of perspectives, thank you. I found someone to cover me and I let her know I’d be able to come and she didn’t reply for a few days and then love heart reacted to it this morning (acceptable I think, although the leaving messages unanswered for many days thing I find pretty rude). It seems I probably owe her an apology (or, more specifically when I rsvped I should have spoken the caveat that if I have work I’ll be MIA). Default mode of honouring the commitments I make seems pretty sensible going forward. All the same I cannot find it in myself to actually apologise to her (I have, in actions, but the saying of the words, I don’t feel it, I could say it but it would feel simpering and icky). I’m vexed and perplexed at how hard I find it to own my side when it comes to conflicts with this person.

Next time she starts to tell you something someone negative has said to her about you, say ‘I would like you to not pass this information onto me. Person might have been venting to you and that’s fine but if they aren’t bothered about it enough to speak to me directly I need that venting to stop with you knowing it. By which I mean don’t pass it on to me’. She’s going to keep trying, this is how she connects with people, every time you catch her ‘hold that thought, I told you before I don’t want to hear the negative things people say about me to you. Is there anything further I need to know for work? If not I’ll get back to mine and talk to you later’ (I imagine you don’t actually want to talk to her anymore and later never comes but if it’s tolerable, you could also derail this bad gossip conversation by asking her something about herself).

And, I’m in the process of looking for someone to take my job that night. At the end of the day we prioritise the things that are important to us. And although this friend these days makes me feel more anxious than comfortable and I’d happily dial her down to an almost never friend, for old times sake I think I should attend. She extended the friendship hand by inviting me and if I don’t attend I don’t complete the social circuit and miss out on a celebration.

A friend of mine has found her the one and the engagement party is the big celebration for it (the wedding is gonna be super low key). I was free on that date so I rsvped. I’ve since been booked for a job which means I’ll miss most of it but I can still be there for the first hour or so. I gave her a heads up cos catering expenses. Turns out too late to reduce the catering and she’s disappointed that I would take a job on that date and that I would attend for only 1 hour. In my head I’m thinking ‘mate I don’t even turn down work for family events, why would I do it for an engagement party for a friend I’ve seen on average once a quarter since she met this guy?!’ I think at the end of the day it’s important to her so in the case of this human, yes the engagement party should have been more important than work. But I wonder more broadly speaking are you meant to forfeit income to attend engagement parties? For more context, we were close once but since she found the one we have drifted far, far, far away and we had a pretty substantial, temporarily friendship ending argument a few months ago which we’ve since come to see each other’s side a bit better but I would say on my end at least the sense of closeness is gone.

I suppose good thing he was honest in the end. His connection with his room mate is more important to him than his connection with you. Burn it with fire and put it in the bin he’s trash!

Lesson learned, don’t date someone with a pet you wouldn’t want to live with.

I think this Munich move could be an amazing adventure if you can go with an open mind. Not having accomodation is very stressful though, I hope you beat the odds and find somewhere quickly

Depending on where your head is currently at, you might find this beneficial, or it might not resonate at all. Read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. There’s a sizeable section of the book dedicated to his thoughts on what he calls the pain body. Everyone has one and when it’s activated it seeks out more painful experiences. One person’s pain body waking up can soon result in Everyone’s pain body’s waking up and seeking fuel (aka, pain). You’re right to try and remove yourself from the situation but maybe you can be even more leveled up in this of the removal happens inside your head ‘ahhh, I see my dad’s pain body is awake and hungry. Ah, I can see mine is trying to wake up too’. By the very act of being able to witness this inside yourself you can reduce how big and important it feels. Outwardly just nod and agree. Eckhart’s expanding on the signature of one of the regular posters here ‘do you want to be right or do you want to be happy’. And keep working towards that goal. And maybe feel out how much it would actually cost you to take a room in a local sharehouse. It’s good to have a sense of what plan b and plan c would look like if you ever had cause to action them.

I’m an extravert without a social group. And at one time without really any friends. The only way to change the no friends situation is to undertake a very long game of meeting new people. Most new people you meet won’t become your friends, that’s fine, but in making it a project to meet a lot of new people (this is a marathon, not a sprint) you stand a chance of meeting more people you click with and may even end up friends with. Don’t let your weirdness be a reason to not even try. Also, next time you meet someone like Kevin, reach out to them and ask them If they’d like to meet up for coffee or to partake in a mutual interest. This is an important step in progressing to friendship.

Consigning I imagine being kicked out for pursueing a perfectly healthy and normal biological and emotional desire was a contributing factor to your sister’s life following a different trajectory to the one imagined. Not the sex. ***ty, unsupportive parents.

Non drinker here, in your shoes I think I would really appreciate being invited. Even if I decided I wanted to spend my time elsewhere, at least it would have been clear to me I could come and him assuming you won’t like it and so not inviting you is an (hopefully) easily correctable thing. Tell him you’d like to be invited if it’s something he wants you to come to. You might decline but you would feel that all important feeling of being included and welcome in his life. As for your attachment anxiety *solidarity fist bump* I’d recommend reading and watching things by Eckhart Tolle. Especially this Your mileage may vary but I found it quite helpful.

Wrestling with anxious attachment here. I found this video insightful (it also made me feel really sad for every single one of us who has had their sense of okay ness with intimacy messed up. It can feel hopeless at the bottom of the hole!) He mentions that people can manifest that attachment trauma in different ways depending on who they’re partnered with that and I can relate to that too. Lately the thing that has been helping me the most is listening to Eckhart Tolle talking about heartbreak. And just listening to/reading Eckhart Tolle in general and then practicing being in the present moment. I feel my anxious anxiety thought patterns starting to get going and I make a conscious choice to redirect my attention to my breathing, my surroundings, the way my clothes feel against my skin, what can I hear. What is in my present moment? Can I be grateful for it whatever it is, good or bad and have no complaints? Also, trying to remove my ego from my interactions with the person who most triggers my anxiety and trying to not react to our interactions by overlaying my own narrative about what’s happening. (The narratives usually make me sad).

Or your can discuss opening the relationship. Or you can end it. There more ways to navigate the loss of spark than deceit.

I think she can feel feelings and still not want to be with you and still not be a person who’s going to lift you up in this life. Now she’s giving you breadcrumbs, not to manipulate you, it’s just a side effect of the duality of feelings and doubting that you’re the person she’s meant to commit to I think, and you’re eating them up but they’re not a meal and you’re going to be left disappointed. I really like this Eckhart Tolle video on one sided love (apologies for posting the link twice, can’t work out how to delete one)

With that little knowledge from your parents it’s sad but not surprising that she is like she is. Of course she can be helped but she needs mental health care. While you have no control over what she does, you can control your own actions. I think in your shoes I would interrogate myself, why do I want to get a rise of of/get the better of this highly hostile and antagonistic person I have to live with? How does my life change if I go grey rock (as boring as a grey rock) in my interactions with her? What can I do to move out of this house? I have a friend who moved out of home at 16 because the house was crowded and his younger brother was like your older sister. I’m sorry you have to navigate such volatility in your own home and wish you luck and patience.

I’ve been reading Eckhart Tolle and he talks a lot about our egos and what they thrive on and how strong identification with the desires of the ego can bring us elation when they get validated but mostly it brings suffering. In this instance the identification with the ego would be how much you’ve internalised that you’re are blood relatives and you ought to have some kind of relationship. Relationship is missing, not for lack of effort on your part, and cue disappointment, frustration, resentment. Imagine she was a total stranger you were trying to make friends with? How many times would you extend the invitation before you assessed that connection as having no potential? As for the relationship she doesn’t have with your parents, try and let that be between them, it isn’t your responsibility to bring them closer together I don’t think. I really like the idea of encouraging your parents to make some kind of arrangement so you don’t have to do the leg work of getting her her inheritance. Although none of it matters in the end that is still a needless bumping of the wound that is still healing. (If there was a person you could delegate to give her health updates too that would be even better). Philosophy aside, getting out of situations where you have to interact with this person who makes it so well known they don’t want to interact with you would be exceptionally good! Wishing you patience and sight to see the actions of your sister and her husband have everything to do with them and nothing to do with you.

Just because the wheels are in motion doesn’t mean you have to see it through. I need more than two hands to list the behaviours you detailed that really ought to be deal breakers. Bulldozing your boundary for space when conflict arises and you get stressed is more than enough reason to get far far far far far away from that person.

Never forget the butterfly feeling can be one sided. Maybe don’t get too caught up on the why. Things you have control over is how quickly you agree to progress intimacy and if getting very intimate and then being told no thank you is a bit of a downer, then there’s benefit to spending more time getting to know someone before you kiss. You’ve never not kissed on a first date and I don’t think I ever have kissed on a first date. Where there was mutual interest kissing happened in good time.