u/Azurebold

Hi all. I (20sF) need some help.

I’ve been encountering a bit of sexual abuse that involves tearing of clothes and friction burns on my skin. I effectively have torn skin on my body. I had to go to the doctor in January to get antibiotics, both topical and oral, to treat a badly infected wound that resulted from this.

I have new wounds and burns, but it feels so much worse now. I haven’t been able to sit down without any pain since yesterday. I really want to go get the wounds checked out, because I genuinely am very worried, but I seriously don’t want to report what happened. It’s not worth pursuing and I’m planning around my own independence and getting out of this environment soon. I’m in a lot of pain, both mental and physical, but I figured the latter would be easier to deal with.

Anyone managed anything similar before? What helped and what would you do?

Hi ladies! Hope everyone’s have a great day.

I’ve been reflecting a bit on 4B and my journey. I’ve found that it has really helped with my own self-assurance. I’m now able to feel more sure of myself and in my decision to stay single and focus on myself, working continuously to become a better person. I think the tenets are great for self-discipline and enhancing my own focus.

However, I will admit that I still struggle heavily with people-pleasing tendencies and low self-confidence. It’s especially bad when I need to interact with men. I think fear has something to do with it (I do have trauma from them which I’m actively working on in therapy). When a man (or even a very pushy woman) pushes my boundaries hard, I end up…giving in? And just letting them step all over me and put me down. It doesn’t sound great and honestly reflects poorly on me, because where’s the self-respect? It feels a little antithetical to what I’m hoping to achieve. Part of becoming a better person includes having a healthy dose of self-respect and the ability to bite back against bad behaviour, but it’s something I’m still struggling with. Makes me kinda think if I’m “really 4B” because I still let men trample all over me.

How do you ladies manage?

Hi everyone. I (23F) feel extremely helpless and like a fucking monster right now.

I’m not religious at all, but I’ve been praying for my nmother’s death. Every single good night, I dream of her death. And it brings me relief. I am, at this point, an irredeemable piece of shit.

I can’t deal with her anymore and I’ve fully run out of patience. She’s no longer just getting on my nerves. She lives rent free in my head and consumes so much of my mental energy and time that I feel lost. Even when I’m out of this hellhouse, she’s constantly trying to contact me, and she’s on my mind. All the truly-unfound criticism, the passive aggressiveness, the manipulation, the lies I have to keep up to keep her at arm’s length, the self-centredness, the emotional dysregulation, the triangulation…there’s just so much to name. She’s unemployed. She stays at home getting angry with everyone all the time when she’s not getting enough attention, she’s pitting everyone against each other, she’s making sure that I’m always aware of her presence everywhere. My sleep has become significantly disrupted because of her. I can’t get a full night of sleep without her barging into my room, slamming my doors, lingering in my room (she keeps all her things in my room), staying in my bathroom and using it with the door open, being so fucking loud with her screaming and inability to manage herself…I’ve crossed my limits.

I start full time employment next week, so the silver lining is that I’ll be out of the house for a good proportion of the week. That still doesn’t negate the fact that every night, regardless of the day, is spent with this insolent woman.

I genuinely need help with tips on how to preserve my sanity and hopefully just…lessen whatever thoughts are coming into my head. I know I need to discuss this with my therapist, but dear God I feel like I’m losing my mind. Someone please tell me I’m not alone in this.

Hi everyone. I’m 23F. I just dealt with a whole period issue that ended up in a bucket of tears in the middle of a Woolworths.

I’m currently on vacation. It’s a 16 day trip, and I’m currently on the 12th day of the trip. It’s been a bit stressful and tiring, with lots and lots of physical activity, weather that is much colder than I’m used to (it’s winter in the southern hemisphere, and I live in a tropical country), and irregular meals. My period was more than a week late, but it arrived yesterday. I did go out and get some pads, but it’s still been difficult to manage. I get that all the factors that I mentioned can cause heavier flow and cramps, but I didn’t know it would be this bad. Long story short, we’ve been busy today and my flow was bad, so I soaked through my jeans.

We stopped at a supermarket with a toilet, and I went in to clean myself up as much as possible, including changing into clean, spare underwear I brought with new pads. It normally isn’t a long process, but I ended up spending close to half an hour in the bathroom because I was sobbing, nose running and all. Like full on bawling. I managed to scrub my underwear adequately and will return to my hotel to launder it properly together with my jeans (after a good and thorough scrubbing with travel detergent and water), but I cried for a good 40 minutes after the fact. I just couldn’t hold the tears back. I’ve been so tired and stressed, and this was the final blow.

In retrospect though, a part of me feels bad because I felt like I was being too emotional about the situation. I’m certain that other women have been through this, and being a young adult, I should know better? Maybe it’s an inner voice thing. Am I overreacting? Anyone else experienced anything similar?

My (22F) mom is obsessed with fair skin. We’re Singaporean Indian. My dad has darker skin, while my mom is on the fairer side. She’s made it a point to make fun of my dad’s skin colour behind his back, but she’s recently hopped on the skin whitening wagon for me. My skin is closer to my dad’s shade than my mom’s, and I’m perfectly happy the way it is.

For further context, I have bad skin on my face. I have a lot of acne scars from my mom scratching and squeezing the pimples off my face as a child and teenager, using her bare hands. Her hands would sometimes be dirty too, so the scarring is pretty extensive. I’m deeply insecure and ashamed of the condition of my skin, and am thinking of doing laser treatments when I can afford it comfortably. My mom is aware that she’s scratched my face up badly, but hasn’t ever said sorry for it. Instead, she gets me to try whitening creams for my whole body. Nothing related to acne or scarring specifically. It’s been pissing me off lately because she gets a new serum/cream from a random source and gives it to me to try. I’m suspicious of these products as they’re ridden with typos on the packaging and don’t have a specific list of ingredients. I don’t know where she’s getting these products, but knowing what typically goes into bootleg cosmetics…yeah no.

She recently got a random cream and told me to use it everyday to “make my skin fairer”. I looked at the package once more and told her I’m good, to which she threw a fit. I tried explaining to her but she got extremely defensive (which has more or less become the norm living with her), so I dropped it. I’ve honestly just started using a piece of tissue to take up the cream, which feels like putty and not cream, crumpling it up, then throwing it away. I do this just so she stops bothering me about it. I know it’s wasteful, but I seriously don’t trust her enough. She doesn’t really like listening to what I have to say either, so it’s better to just disengage.

But by God, it’s so annoying. I know it’s so prevalent in Asian culture, but holy shit. People really need to cool it.

I (22F) still live with my parents. I just graduated from university and am waiting to start full-time employment. Things may become a lot easier for me once I start working as I’ll be out of the house 5-6 days a week for long periods of time each day.

My nMom is unemployed. Hence, she is at home everyday. I hate being at home. I can’t stand her presence. However, one issue I’ve been having with her that I feel I cent really talk about is feeling “frozen” whenever she’s within my line of sight or in the same place as me. She tends to barge into my bedroom at all hours of the day. I don’t have privacy in my own house. She uses my bathroom and bedroom for all her routines, and tends to stay in there for hours on end. I’m sometimes woken up at odd hours in the morning as she’s excessively noisy or attempting to ask me questions as I sleep. I tend to open my eyes and stay locked in to whatever sleeping position I was in until she leaves. My anxiety just gets worse when she’s around.

I have an embarrassing issue because of this. I have a distended urinary bladder. It is incredibly painful and difficult to manage alone, and I have urge incontinence despite being in my early 20s. It’s something I’m deeply ashamed of. Her barging in and staying in my room has gone on for a very long time, with all verbal and physical boundaries like telling her off and locking my door, being overridden and disrespected. Whenever she’s in my room, I feel like I can’t get up and go to the bathroom because it doesn’t feel safe. As such, when I need to use the toilet in the morning, I’d hold it and wait until she leaves my room, whenever that may be. I’ve had accidents because of this. I hate it so much.

Other than this, I feel like I can’t relax at all in my room. If she barges in, I pause whatever I’m doing and wait for her to leave. If it’s studying, watching TV, or playing a game, I’d pause. Wearing noise cancelling headphones doesn’t help either as I’d still pause and wait for her to leave. She’s constantly overstaying and it genuinely sucks.

Please help.

I’m at a loss. I feel like I’m going to break down and burst into tears. This feels so deeply fucked up.

I (22F) just graduated from university and will be starting work soon. My AM has been making life extremely miserable for me ever since. She’s unemployed and stays at home, perusing TikTok and whatever else she sees fit online. I don’t particularly care about this, it’s her life. But she’s been involving me in so much of her shit that I can’t breathe.

She’s been breathing down my throat about getting married soon. According to her, I need to marry a doctor. For context, we’re Singaporean Indian. I am a medical speech therapist who will be starting work very soon. Mum is very insistent on me dating a doctor, preferably Indian.

I feel like I should have seen something like this coming, but the first red flag was her showing me pictures of random guys I’ve never seen before, and told me that they’re doctors who might not even be living in Singapore. She didn’t know much about them apart from what they looked like and the fact they were doctors. I asked her where she’s finding these guys, but she suddenly got defensive and told me they it’s none of my business.

The second red flag was her being extremely secretive about why she suddenly needs US$150 from my dad. She would constantly remind him in front of me. If I was around, and my dad asked why, she would get mad again and would just say it’s for ‘something important’. She had also gone into my bedroom once while I was outside, closed the door, and spoke to someone on the phone about this mysterious payment, talking about marriage contracts and emails.

I only learned about this when she called me down to ask for help as she couldn’t successfully make payment. Her card kept getting declined. I asked her what website she was using, and she immediately screamed at me saying it’s none of my business. I told her I need to know so that I can see if it’s fraudulent or if it’s a legitimate purchase. It’s easier to call up the bank and have the issue sorted out if it’s the latter. That’s when she told me it was an account for her so that she could contact the parents of the guys. I was shocked. I asked her what information she inputted, and she refused to share. I eventually saw the email that was sent to her, and it contained my full government name, age, and other personal details. I’m not sure if she ever uploaded a picture. The website was indeed fraudulent as she wasn’t getting any input from the contact centre, and it was flagged multiple times through her computer’s antivirus. It was an Indian website, specifically for finding doctors to marry. I was fuming.

She later told me she dropped the whole matter and told me to look for a man myself, making sure he’s a doctor.

I haven’t confronted her about it at all since I learned of this. It’s been two weeks or so. The paranoia is just starting to hit me now. I feel like confronting her on this, but I know it won’t end well. She is extremely emotionally volatile, immature, and self-centred. I don’t know what to do.