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Perth, Perth, Perth adventure. Possibly even sign up for something at uni or Tafe, then you can be in the new place inside a solid frame work with something to do and people to meet . I’m sorry for the loss of the dream of what the relationship could have been.

Yep, yep yep yep yep, had about a 5 year drought where I found nought but emotionally unavailable men (and sometimes emotionally available men who did not light my fire). And I hardened and closed off too. Which made coming together with someone when he finally came along really really hard. No great advice really, just solidarity. In my case I was still wounded from the last time and I think that was impacting everything to do with dating. About 4 years in I worked away from home for 7 months, it was face meltingly lonely, when I came back I was a different person, way more comfortable with my own company. I feel like that was a step in the right direction of recovering from the last heart break (just you can go far, harden up too much. It’s hard to find that balance). Recommend accumulating a bunch of really good experiences flying solo. For me when I was on that working trip I went on countless solo missions to explore my surroundings (while my colleagues drank wine and talked about things that happened before I joined the crew). When I got back I realised all my best memories were from those solo trips. Empowering moment.

I actually do think this is a situation where you could be honest about what’s going on. ‘If I’m being awkwardly honest, lately I seem to have caught feelings for you and I need a little bit of time part to reset and recalibrate back to finest of fine friends. ‘ It’s true people can freak out when unreciprocated feelings are presented but you’re already taking steps to manage them yourself in a way that doesn’t involve or impose upon her and I think that’s pretty honourable.

A thought, while you nurture this flame for your friend, are you keeping yourself super safe from ever forming a meaningful relationship with someone else (and opening yourself up to the chance of being hurt again). I feel like you might get some benefit out of the baggage reclaim blog, it’s good reading.

My two cents, start much much much much lower stakes. Challenge one is to think of three activities you can attend in the next 3 months that facilitate the gathering of multiple people over their shared like of the thing. Examples, dance classes, yoga, hiking groups, origami classes, knitting corners (don’t know how to knit? Learn, the chances of any knitting group you join being populated by a bunch of 30 something, gentle, indie kids with social anxiety co puttering along is hiiiigh), volunteer, community theatre groups, choirs, reading groups, etc etc etc etc. Granted absolutely none of this might appeal to you, especially with the black dog nipping at your ankles. But it is worth giving them a try anyway, because challenge one is to go into that social setting and endeavour to have conversations with some strangers (even one stranger, one stranger is fine. This is for the purpose of nurturing your social interaction skills. It’s never too late to develop them). Part two and part three of this project is escalating some of these strangers with whom you converse into friends who you see on the regular but this is a very long game so be patient and focus on achieving step one first. (Part three is bumping into someone who sparks feelings in you and inviting Them out for coffee. And then not taking it personally if they don’t reciprocate, because it’s a numbers game and you need to bump into that person who is inspired to feel feelings for you too. And when the chemistry is there nothing you’ve written above matters!) As to why are people put off? Hard to say without at the very least being able to hear you interacting with someone. I think back to when someone has been talking my ear off, I guess they’re missing the signals I’m giving off that I’m not vibing the current conversation. (Which would be things like one word or no word answers). And if you and I crossed paths and we got onto politics I’d be put off by your politics personally but there’s some nerdy metal head xenophobe lady out there who would nodding along in firm approval for sure.

Both of catfeeder’s suggestions are excellent

Information diet time. Ram Dass says ‘you think you are enlightened? Try spending two weeks with your family’ *grimace grin*

You don’t have to go home.

You already have a good perspective on this. I think while you continue to support him you will need to fill your cup elsewhere and (if you haven’t already done this) now could be a good time to brainstorm everything and everyone that makes you happy and make sure you’re scheduling a lot of those things into your day. Wishing you strength to be the rock

Maybe why this rubs the wrong way is a discrepancy in grace giving. You extended her a lot of grace when she errored. Now you’re learning she won’t extend you any (at least right now, she might extend more when she’s calmed down). I think it would be alright to be a tiny bit salty about that, briefly, and then mentally demote her to a more at arms length friend.

I bet your libido would increase with the right person. Maybe you’re very endeared to this one though and you’d like to keep him if possible. Next time you kiss can you imagine yourself back when you were kissing each other for the first time? Can you remember the butterflies in your stomach, the stirrings of desire? Do you remember why he’s the one you chose? We can definitely make a conscious choice to say yes to sex more often (although please don’t feel obliged to. In my experience I lose my libido for someone but I always enjoy it when we get going. If you’re feeling that you don’t want to be doing this persists from start to finish there’s important information there).

Huhhhh. Australian here. Did a lot of unsuccessful dating where I made the first move and sure enough the guy was interested but not that interested. I said that I didn’t make the first move I would have gone on very near zero dates. Maybe that’s why.

Just think how much your cost of living will go down without this dead weight. (It’s one thing to be pulling an unequal share for a short while while a partner picks themselves back up but I think you have all the information you need to know that this guy will not pick himself up for long). If you find yourself unable to walk away right now, how about instead ceasing to be the diligent one that pays the bills. Go and get your hair and nails done, go and visit your friends. Let everything crash on the ground and your freeloader can deal with the consequences for once.

A contemplation, I have a young tech friend with a Greek name that no one can pronounce properly Sounds like yourrrrrgo with the rolled r. But looks like Giorgios! I’ve been calling him jeorgous, like gorgeous but with the j sound, my boss calls him Gio like Jio and I’m like ‘that’s not his name’. But then I learned I’d been saying it wrong too. He’s given up, he doesn’t introduce himself as yourrrrgo. I shared this story with an old muso shortly after it happened, this guy is also Greek. I know him as black jack. Turns out he has a secret Greek name too! Gidiaku. That’s not even hard to say. But I can imagine Australians in the 70s and 80s stumbling over the unfamiliar sounds and getting it wrong and him giving up and taking a western name. I’d say the percentage of the expat community who don’t speak English as a first language that are using an adopted name where I live is not small. People who learn the error of their ways and insist on calling you the wrong name are being absolute *** though!

Ooooooof. It would be one thing if he was mean to everyone (a bad thing) but to be singled out like that 😞 I’m going with abusive And bad parenting and I know it’s not easy to uproot your whole life but if you don’t protect your son from this, no one will and he’ll just have to endure it. This is how people develop personality disorders and attachment trauma.

Co sign the advice to get doing and get finding and maintaining meaningful connections with your people whoever and where ever they are. Adding getting regular massages (no, not for the happy ending, I’m a woman and no one has ever offered and if they did I’d probably feel too weird about it anyway). Aside from massage feeling great! I find this also keeps touch hunger at bay. There’s no cure for the longing that I know off except finding the one you long for but at least touch hunger is an easy fix.

I’m sorry to hear life is unbearable at the moment, that’s really hard to deal with. And yet you’re here, reaching out, that’s mighty and I hope you can recognise that. Is it possible to give seeking mental health care a go (or another go if you’ve already tried and the psych wasn’t a good fit for you)? In the absence of that you might gain a useful perspective reading a New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Hoping you will get to have your cake and eat it too (that is to say, stay alive, and be relieved of suffering).

Counselling for sure. Also read the book He’s scared, She’s scared by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol. People with an avoidant attachment style are known for just up and vanishing on well established relationships. For the person being left this is a cruel and traumatic way to end things. It might help to see that in text and feel seen/validated.

While I was indecisive about bringing it up again, the universe presented a chance meeting with my boss in a context outside of working for him. We chatted for a bit and before he could run away I apologised again and let him know about shifting to the calendar app with notifications on and thank you for not cancelling the rest of my shifts, he would have been within rights. He said he would have stuffed himself if he had (very short of crew at the moment). In short, I still did wrong and let him down and he knows it but by chance of circumstance I have an opportunity do right by him going forward.

Your gut feelings to be up front about what steps I’m taking to not mess up like this again are mine. But both my friend who owned a company and managed staff for 11 years and my dad who managed staff for 16 said ‘don’t bring that up, keep it simple, apologise, identify that you know what the problem is and affirm it won’t happen again’. Which brings me to an anxious point of indecision. Certainly after this I’m going back to telling the truth. Even if it’s bad enough it gets me fired. Better than the truth being bad and getting caught in the lie.

Owch, I think I might be caught out in the lie. I sent an email apologising and confirming I’ll be there for my Wednesday shift and the boss replied ‘no problem, hopefully the sea air helps you feel better’ *PANIC* My dad used to manage staff and I called him about what to do. His two cents was ‘leave it well alone and he might know and be letting you know he knows but he hasn’t fired you.’ He did suggest calling the client tomorrow to ask how it went and apologise and stress this was 100% my fault not my bosses and i really hope I haven’t damaged his relationship with the client. And that It would be better to talk to the boss face to face about how i handled this morning./ only if he brings it up. And that I have one week of extremely bad unreliability but before that a year of steady quality friendly work under my belt. Ugh. I can implement systems to never have this again but the repercussions of today I have to live with. And I’m brought to mind of a sound tech thread where people were discussing their worst gigs. Occasionally someone would pipe up and say ‘it’s not brain surgery, at least when you have a bad gig nobody dies’.

I did yes a bunch of these jobs and while doing so message the boss to let him know about two I couldn’t do. At which point he said they weren’t quite confirmed yet by the client (client looking for their own full time technician). They subsequently did get confirmed and I would have sat down to transfer them all to my diary and must have just not seen this one, the month view for the app calendars isn’t great for my brain (and I am just now realising I should switch to week for this task). With the missed job the week before it wasn’t in the app calendar but I made the mistake of confirming before I was sitting down with my diary ready to write it down (which is what I normally do). I think you’ve got the right way catfeeder.

Bolt you remember correctly. (One if this years Nye resolutions is to plan to be 15 minutes early for everything. So far, going ok, in that I still run late but because I was aiming early I’m landing on time). Truly worst feeling. Up until now I’ve forgone app calendars in favour of the paper diary because being able to see it all laid out is pleasing to me (not just a little ‘hey there’s something here dot like you see on the Apple calendar). Time to switch to calendar app though paper no good if I can’t keep it up to date.

Found the notification settings and turned them all on. Good thing about this job the boss puts the bookings in the calendar (and I get an email saying can you accept this shift and need to click yes to lock it in). Still feel awful. Wish I hadn’t traveled away from home. This would still be bad if I was home but at least I could have gone in late. I never took any holidays from my work for about 16 years and I’ve been tentatively trying to take some these last few months so I can travel, the first time one of my fill in techs did such a bad job at a gig I lost that client and this time I’ve missed an 8 hour shift and shot my reputation for being reliable in the face, again. (Missing the income hurts too). I feel like ‘what is wrong with me that I can’t remember and honour a commitment these days? ‘ And also like taking time off is cursed don’t do that.

As it says in the name. This time last Monday I had to be chased down by phone because I was meant to be on site showing a new sound tech around the client’s space. Last Monday this happened because I had said yes to the shift I missed the step where it went in my diary. (Last time there was the new tech there and she held the fort and I was able to come late and show her around without the event suffering. I didn’t charge for that job and resolved to be fantastically reliable for everything else this term. Today I get a call from the client asking when I’m coming in. PANIC! I’m 300km and a fully booked out ferry ride away from the venue. I managed to get through to my boss pretty quickly and let him know I was feeling really Ill and, although he’s already got one venue he needs to be at this morning, and another one calling him, and the other tech that usually covers when I’m unavailable is going in for surgery today, he can swing by my venue and get them going. So I guess I think I hope this client will be ok but I don’t just hurt me with these two *** ups, if he loses the client over them that’s even worse. Going over today’s *** up I can see once again this shift is not in my diary. I didn’t manually copy it over. Why didn’t I manually copy it over? How do I not *** up like this again? This is really really really really bad. (Can I get google calendar to send me reminders for jobs?! I’m going to look into that right now). I’m a ball of anxiety and fear right now for the safety of my future employment and the safety of my boss’s ongoing relationship with with the client and worse, I failed at basic schedule keeping and I don’t know why, which means, what’s to stop this from happening again? I’m 36 years old what the *** is wrong with me that suddenly this year I can’t keep a basic work commitment?! (Because I did have one dangerously near misses years ago and then I started keeping the diary to try and prevent that.)