u/EmotionallyUnwelll

I (23F) started listening your podcast about 4 months ago during my commute after starting a new job, and honestly it’s helped me reflect on my life a lot and helped me feel like I was listening to a friend in the most confusing time of my life. But the more I reflect, the more I feel like something is seriously wrong with me mentally/emotionally.

From 2024 until now, my life has been a complete mess.

I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in business and started working at a small firm. That’s where I met my ex (25M). At the time I was 21/22 and he was 23/24. We only officially started dating after I left the company in 2024 because the work environment was unbelievably toxic, stressful, and borderline abusive.

At the beginning of the relationship he completely love bombed me. I felt wanted, cared for, special… and then after maybe 5 months, he randomly sent me a breakup text in the middle of the night and basically ghosted me.

Around that same time, I was struggling badly to find another job. After months of sending resumes, the same company actually called me back because apparently I was still highly regarded there. I’ve always been recognized academically — my university lecturers think highly of me, I’m currently doing my master’s thesis, etc. So despite how horrible the environment was, I went back (this was 2025).

Truthfully, I think part of me also went back because my ex still worked there and I missed him.

At first we barely spoke, but eventually we started sleeping together again. No labels, no relationship, just sex and emotional confusion.

Then something extremely traumatic happened. My boss drugged me and almost tried to SA me. Thankfully I stayed lucid enough that nothing fully happened, but it was terrifying. My ex was actually one of the people who supported me through it, and I leaned on him heavily afterward.

But then, months later, he did the exact same thing again: middle-of-the-night message saying we should stop seeing each other.

This time I cried, picked myself up, and went to my new job the next morning — which is thankfully a much healthier environment.

Not long after that, I met another guy (24M) through Instagram. Ironically, it turns out he and my ex had history and fell out over my ex’s previous girlfriend.

This new guy is objectively everything I thought I wanted. Attractive, ambitious, intelligent, driven — way more than my ex ever was. But the first major red flag came when he found out who my ex was and literally told me my “value was lowered” because I had been with him.

That hurt deeply.

I didn’t think my worth should be determined by another man.

Still, we kept talking because I was helping him with his business. But I was still emotionally hung up on my ex, and eventually I made another bad decision: I slept with him too.

My friend encouraged me to give him a shot, and he himself said it could just be casual sex.

The problem is… the sex wasn’t even good. I didn’t finish, he did. I literally told him straight up afterward that I didn’t finish, then I left.

Since then, we barely talk. Almost a month later he says he’s “too busy” — too busy to even discuss the business stuff we were originally talking about.

Now I feel awful and confused.

Did I ruin a potential relationship? Why am I thinking about him constantly when he made me feel bad about myself? Why do I want his attention so badly when logically I KNOW he isn’t good for me?

At this point I genuinely feel mentally disturbed because I keep gravitating toward things that hurt me. I went back to a toxic job. I went back to my ex after he discarded me. Now I’m focusing over a guy who insulted my worth and barely talks to me.

Meanwhile, everyone in my life sees me as the “golden child.” I’m logical, emotionally controlled, academically successful, hardworking, etc. Nobody expects this from me.

But internally I feel like a mess.

I don’t know if I’m desperate, trauma bonding, validation seeking, emotionally damaged from the SA incident, or what. I’ve thought about therapy, but where I’m from there’s a huge “work comes first” mentality and my life is basically work-school-home on repeat. I barely have time to breathe.

So… what is wrong with me? Why do I keep wanting people who make me feel worse about myself?

Note: I used Chat to help me with my language and summarise my feelings because I was writing very sporadically.