u/Remarkable_Face_7671

I feel like I’m overreacting a bit but it makes me feel worried about his intentions. We’ve been together for a year and a half and have had some talks about both wanting marriage and kids, and wanting to move somewhere together when I graduate (he already has). I’m coming up to my last year of Uni and when I try to talk to him about where he’d like to live together that would be best for both our careers, what our long term goals are, even just daydreaming about how nice it will be etc, he just agrees and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have any input into our plans and just says yes to whatever but doesn’t seem too invested or excited about it.
I talked to him about it this morning and said I feel a bit worried because I feel like he doesn’t like talking about our future. He just said he doesn’t like thinking about the future in general and prefers to live in the moment. But he’s always planning his future career, preparing things for it. When it comes to our relationship, I feel like I’m the only one who’s excited about moving in together. And it is next year, so it seems like a good time to be talking about it and making plans. This all just makes me feel like he doesn’t see a future with me despite how much he reassures me about it. He promised he’d tell me if he didn’t see a future, and he says I’m the one, but surely he’d be more excited and want to discuss it more?

I’ve been searching for a part time job for over a year, I’m a student and rent for a room in a houseshare where I live is close to £800 per month so I’m really struggling to survive on student loans. But I just can’t find a job. I don’t even get rejection emails anymore.
I saw a sign in a shop window last week and spoke to the woman, she said she’d just put it up and we chatted, she asked about my work history and availability etc. she said I seemed perfect for the job and said if I send my CV in an email, then she’ll let the boss know and they’ll be in touch.
It’s been over a week and I haven’t heard anything back. Should I send a follow-up? I don’t want to seem desperate but I’m worried this is just going to be like every other time and I’ll get ghosted again. I really need this job. What do I do?

This is going to sound super specific but since I played Ruby as a kid I’ve been yearning for a cosy pokemon spin-off where you can have a house/grow berries/be a gym leader/run a daycare etc. Basically anything that’s more focused on NPC relationships/raising pokemon/exploring and less focused on battling, stats and linear gym badges.
Pokopia kind of fits that but I can’t afford a Switch 2 and tbh I haven’t been a fan of newer pokemon games since X/Y.
So are there any fan games or roms that would vaguely fit one of these descriptions? I love fan games but most of them tend to be the same forumula of battling and getting gym badges. Are there any that shake up the formula a bit?

So my bf has allegedly been clean for over a month but he’s historically quite a liar about it and very convincing. His main source of porn was through instagram reels and thirst traps. He admitted that last week he nearly relapsed by searching on the twitter website for sexual content but stopped before he did anything. He swears he stopped there and hasn’t done anything other than that, but when I stay at his house and I use his wifi, my instagram reels are suddenly full of thirst traps and fake AI women. I know for a fact that I don’t consume this kind of content so it’s weird that it pops up for me when im at his only. Is it possible that the algorithm is shared through a wifi connection? Or am I just being paranoid and it’s a coincidence?

He’s admitted he notices attractive women in public and it triggers him sometimes and that he feels like it’s hard for him not to look, but he tries to look at me instead. I feel like human shit. Is it naive and unrealistic of me to want my bf not to notice hot women when we’re on a date? I want him to not even notice them because he’s looking at me. Instead I’m what he looks at when he doesn’t want to be triggered.
He’s doubled down and said that’s not what he meant, and he really meant he was WORRIED he might come across as creepy but he doesn’t see them that way. Fucking bullshit. I’m so fucking angry and brokenhearted. All the lovely memories of dates and trips we’ve been on are tainted by the knowing that when I felt insecure that he was looking at someone else, it’s because he was.
I feel like the most hideous woman alive. I don’t want to go anywhere if there’s other women there now. He admitted that when we’ve been swimming at the beach he’s found it hard not to look at the women in their swimsuits. I’m trying to move past this but my heart hurts.
I asked him what the women he noticed tended to look like. Were they thin, curvy? Did they have straight hair or curly? Dark hair or blonde? I need to know what to change. I don’t want to be me anymore. I hate myself so much. I can’t even be pretty enough for my own fucking partner I’m a disgrace to women. I wish I was anyone else. He won’t even tell me what they looked like, he says I don’t need to change a thing. Clearly I do. I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of not knowing if he’s looking at me or some random woman. I’m tired of not knowing if he’s thinking of me during sex/masturbation or someone else. I’m tired of not knowing what he’s doing on his phone, whether he’s relapsed or whether he’s messaging other girls because now the trust is gone the thought of him cheating seems more likely. I’m completely destroyed.

When I was diagnosed with PCOS last winter, it was during my worst ever flare up. I lost my period for months, my hair was falling out, I gained about a stone and a half, I was constantly hungry and craving carbs and cheese. Like, appetite to the point where I could eat a whole tray of enchiladas and loaf of garlic bread and still not be full.

I’ve since looked into nutrition and have cut out most sugary drinks apart from an iced latte here and there, I no longer eat white carbs. I’ll have eggs with brown wholemeal bread or if I have rice with curry or bibimbap, I’ll substitute half of it for a grain like pearl barley. I haven’t cut out carbs like potatoes and pasta (most of the time I’ll have sweet potatoes and wholewheat pasta instead but sometimes I like white), but I’ll cut out half the portion and have protein and fibre with it.

I’ve been doing resistance training, like weight lifting and yoga, and I’m walking a lot more. I take myo inositol in the morning with water, metformin and berberine twice a day with a meal, and myo inositol again at night with a green tea. This along with starting medication for my ADHD has helped a lot with my appetite and if I have protein (like eggs) with my breakfast then I find I’m not hungry again until dinner and I’ll have a good-sized meal with plenty of fibre and protein. I still snack occasionally if I’m on my period but apart from that I’m not very hungry. I feel like I’m doing quite well and I feel a lot better but my weight is slow to come off. I’m not gaining, but it’s been about a month and I haven’t lost much. Only a couple pounds. I notice a lot of people meticulously track their calories and nutrients. The thing is, I have a history of disordered eating and when I try that, I get so obsessive that I start severely restricting until I get so ashamed and burnt out that I give up and start binging again.

I find it easier to eat intuitively now my appetite and cravings are fixed but I wonder, do I HAVE to track to lose weight? I feel like I don’t eat that much but I know that calories can be sneaky.
Has anyone here had any success without tracking?

I’m only 21 (turning 22 this month) and before I found out about this I felt my age - I felt carefree, attractive, confident. I knew I could turn him on and loved doing my hair, having an everything shower, and buying new lingerie to surprise him with. PA is 25 and knew about his addiction our whole relationship. (We’ve been together a year and a half but I only found out the extent of it over a month ago) I just found out recently his relationship before me ended because of his porn addiction - she broke up with him because it was to a point he was no longer interested in her.

Since DDay, I’ve withdrawn into myself. I wear more frumpy clothing because I’m insecure of my figure (I’m 160lb so not skinny like the girls he prefers online), I rarely wear makeup because I just feel like “what’s the point?”.

One thing that bothers me is I’m turning into a female misogynist. I hate this about myself but I can’t control it. I feel a resentment towards other women that’s turning into misogyny. I judge their clothing if it’s revealing (clothes I used to wear when I was happy) because I know he’s going to look at her. And I think subconsciously I find it easier to blame the women rather than blame the man I’ve loved so dearly for a year and a half. I can’t accept this new version of him, it must be someone else’s fault. I don’t treat women any differently and I still love my friends, but random women in public make me feel so threatened. I’ve stopped watching certain YouTubers who are women, if I think they might be his type, because it just depresses me.

Me and my boyfriend have been going to the beach lately (UK heatwave) and swimming frequently. I had a lot of fun with it but did feel an underlying paranoia that he was tempted by the women in swimsuits. When we’re in public and there are women, I preemptively check them out and if they’re attractive or wearing something revealing, I either guide him somewhere else or keep talking so much that he will look at me instead. I thought this was just reactionary paranoia to everything I found on his phone, but tonight he told me when we’ve been at the beach he has been uncontrollably looking at the women in their swimsuits, but will try hard to stop and look at me instead. He’s said if he sees an attractive clothed woman in public he will feel triggered. When he’s horny he will first feel an urge to look at porn but then come to a compromise and fantasise about me instead. I don’t feel like a hot 21 year old, I feel like the stereotypical housewife trying to compete with his hot secretary or something.

I should be happy that he’s trying not to look at them, but I don’t want it to be an effort. I want him to not even notice them because he thinks I’M the most beautiful. It’s easy for him to tell me not to blame myself, but surely if I looked like a pornstar he wouldn’t need to look elsewhere? All the fun we’ve had on dates is now tainted with the knowledge that subconsciously he would rather be looking at a more attractive woman, and most likely is when I’m not looking.

My eating disorder is coming back. I’ve cried so much tonight that I feel sick. I don’t want to compete with every woman in public. I don’t want to be on alert. I want to feel sexy again. I’m not the most attractive woman, I’m not the kind who gets looks in public or asked out, but I don’t think I’m hideous. I think I’m a normal 21 year old. When will I feel that way again? I love him so much that I can’t bear the thought of leaving and feel like I physically couldn’t walk my body out the door if I tried. I want that future together he promised me, I want to grow old together. But how can I trust him? He lied to me and gaslit me for months and I had no idea. How do I know this won’t escalate to cheating?

I’m miserable. He broke down crying today saying he feels like he doesn’t make me happy and that we should break up. I realised I didn’t disagree. But neither of us can bear breaking up. When will this feeling stop? When will I feel happy and confident again? Looking back at photos when we first met, I was quite pretty. It makes me angry that he dated me just to end up destroying my self esteem and independence even if it wasn’t intentional. Please tell me there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like I’m drowning.

DDay was a month and a half ago and I’m struggling to come to terms with it. He had a problem with checking women out in front of me (presumably caused by the porn addiction), including on a date he took me on to some pretty gardens on my 21st birthday. He checked out a woman’s ass right in front of me and then gaslit me about it. Come to find out that after six months of gaslighting, his porn addiction had gotten to the point where he would wake up before me to go to the bathroom and masturbate to onlyfans creators on instagram, and then come back and kiss my forehead and bring me coffee. It was a long, hard discovery because I begged multiple times, sobbing, because I KNEW. I felt it in my gut. He gaslit me, said I was imagining it. Then after about five hours straight of me pleading with him to be honest, he admitted it. My self esteem has not been the same and I’m starting to develop an eating disorder. I feel like the most hideous woman alive because I am still second choice - he says that he often gets the urge to watch porn but will use my pictures instead as a compromise. I don’t want to be a compromise, I want him to want to look at me instead.

Anyway, he downloaded the Quitter app and has been keeping a streak on there. It’s blocked some websites (not sure which, he didn’t say) and he’s been keeping a journal on there about his progress. I accepted that his journal was private and left him to it, and blindly believed the streak that he showed me every morning. He’s now on day 45. Recently we spent a week apart. I had that same awful shaky feeling in my gut that he’d relapsed. I begged him again to be honest and after about four hours again of me sobbing and him trickle truthing, he said he went into twitter to look for porn but decided to stop and look at my pictures instead. This gut feeling is persisting and I just don’t believe him.

I asked if I can look at his phone. I did that once before, on DDay and never again. But I feel an overwhelming urge to now. He said he doesn’t want that kind of relationship and wants me to take his word for it. I told him that taking his word for it doesn’t work because I was lied to and gaslit for months. I need proof. He disagreed and said that’d only worsen my trust issues.

I asked if I can see his most recent journal entry in the app. I saw a glimpse of it that alluded to checking other women out again and it worried me. I need to know if this is still a problem. I need to know what he’s thinking and how it’s going, but he won’t tell me and the app doesn’t alert or break the streak if he uses twitter or instagram, which were his main sources for porn. I’m losing my mind and after hours of sobbing about how I don’t know what to believe he is persistent that I can’t look at the journal.
I’m aware that it’s a breach of privacy but it’s the only thing I can think of that’ll give me answers. He deletes his internet history and uses the web for instagram and twitter. He doesn’t have the apps.
I feel like I’m being controlling but I just don’t know how else I can know the truth. If he’s still checking out other women and still struggling with attraction to me then I need to leave. I can’t take this - I have a history of eating disorders and it’s rearing its head again. I can’t get into the app without his Face ID so even if I did want to snoop I couldn’t.

Does anyone have any advice? Is he hiding something or am I being emotionally abusive/controlling and invading his privacy?? Please please please I am going crazy.

TL;DR boyfriend/PA won’t let me see his journals he’s been writing in his accountability app or his phone in general. I have a horrible feeling he’s relapsed. Is this normal

My boyfriend is a fan of the Tintin franchise and mentioned as a kid he had a jumper that was Tintin official merchandise - it was yellow and had an embroidered design on the collar/neckline. He said he loved it but obviously he outgrew it at like age 13.
He still wears quite similar jumpers with graphic designs or embroidering on them, like Snoopy etc. I want to knit him an adult replica of that Tintin jumper but can’t find any pictures online or evidence of it existing lol. Did anyone have one or see one similar? What did it look like? I can’t ask him what it looked like exactly because then he’d know I’m plotting something. Thank you!!

This is kind of just a mini rant but how come when we’re home it’s my job every night to think of what to cook, get the ingredients and make the meal. Always “what should we make for dinner tonight” and then I have to decide and make it all. And then when I’m away he messages that he’s making a fancy salmon dish for himself. I’m glad he’s eating good but where’s this intuition when I’m home!!! I can’t even afford salmon so we never have it lol. He used to cook these fancy meals for me at the start of our relationship. He’s a great cook and he loved showing it off. Nowadays not so much. It’s my job now. It gets so tiring.

Like physically, I’m not capable. I’m a 5’1 woman who’s just started a KP job and I didn’t realise it would involve carrying so many heavy metal parts of industrial units. Closing is the worst part, dismantling the dishwasher, carrying the massive heavy af bin bags through the kitchen, taking apart the drains. I can’t even carry the drains, I just end up dropping them.
Even just putting some of the dishes away, I can’t reach most of the shelves and just get in the chef’s way. I keep waking up with dread every morning knowing I have work. FOH are posh bastards who treat us like dogshit. I hate when it’s after close and I’m draining the grease trap ankle deep in brown grease and some fuckass waiter comes in to dump their dishes from their free meal after their shift. Hearing them all laughing and having a drink in the other room while I’m still working my ass off an hour after I was supposed to clock out.
I really want to quit. Like right now, I’m about to quit.

I made a post last night about something that’d happened where my bf told me my vagina grossed him out. The responses got me thinking about the relationship and I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t know what’s normal. I really need someone to tell me if I’m making this all up or exaggerating. I’m so confused and I don’t know why he does these things or if every man does this.
Please if you have time, read this to the end. I know it’s insanely long but I’m at the end of my tether and I feel like I’m losing my mind. I asked on r/relationshipadvice but they just made me feel like I’m stupid for staying and it’s common sense that this isn’t normal. But I don’t have a dad and my mum had abusive boyfriends in and out of my life, I don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like and I don’t know how a man is supposed to treat me. Please tell me what’s normal.

- he doesn’t care when he hurts me. He never physically hurts me on purpose but he’s extremely clumsy and will often pull my hair, hit me, push me, drop things on me etc by accident. If I yelp in pain he snaps at me and says it was an accident. He never asks if I’m ok or says sorry. The other day he was helping me carry a chest of drawers. He told me it’d be easier if I put my hand inside the top drawer so I can grab it and lift it, so I did. He then started pushing on the drawer with all his body weight and was crushing my hand inside it. I yelped in pain and asked him to stop and move away from the drawer, and he just pushed further into it, saying “what??” I ended up shouting “please move, you’re crushing my hand!” And he moved out of the way. He then got angry and said “I obviously didn’t know what you meant.” I started crying because he was mad at me again, and he got angry because I was crying. Things like this will often happen, he’ll hit me in the face by mistake while stretching and then will get angry when it hurts. He has never once apologised and asked if I was ok or hugged me, he just gets angry. He will only apologise after a while just to make me stop crying.
I’m also clumsy but I always apologise and ask if he’s ok if I accidentally push him or something.

- he gets angry when he makes me cry. If I’m upset by something else, he’s the sweetest person ever and will hold me and kiss me. If it’s something he’s done, he gets cold and apathetic.
I have PCOS and I had the worst flare up of my life last winter. I was dizzy and sick and on the verge of fainting from the fatigue and couldn’t get out of bed. I hadn’t eaten all day so he said “let’s get you some food.” I thought that was so sweet because he’d never made me food when I was ill before. Or at least helped me with it and kept me company in the kitchen. I went to the kitchen with him and I was so dizzy I had to hold onto the counters to stay standing up.
He then said, “on second thoughts, it’s simple enough. You can figure it out.” I thought he was joking but he actually just went and sat down to play video games in the next room. I decided to just cook anyway and got pans out ready on the stove. I nearly passed out and had to sit down and was just crying out of frustration because I couldn’t do anything. He came in and snapped at me for crying and said “are you seriously crying because you have to make your own food? This is way out of proportion.” I ended up just going back to sleep because I can never eat when he’s angry with me, I get too anxious.

- he insults my intelligence and beliefs. He can be so smug and condescending with me, but only with me. Never with his male friends or family however his mum has said to me that he’s a very smug person. I can’t describe the tone he uses with me other than the word contempt. The way he speaks to me sometimes when I voice my opinions sounds like he hates me as a person. He speaks to me like I’m a misbehaving child. He will often tell me I lack common sense or just flat out calls me stupid. When I get upset about that, he says he was just joking.
I never thought I was a stupid person before but I feel utterly brainless now. I feel like I can’t trust myself or my own mind. I’ve flat out asked him, “do you really think I’m stupid?” And he’ll just say something like, “not in some ways.”

- he lies to me. He can lie to my face without feeling guilty. He will only feel guilty if he’s found out. The worst was his porn addiction. He made me feel insane for months and said I was projecting and imagining things and that he’d never betray me like that. It turned out my intuition was right the entire time.

- he always says I’m exaggerating or making something out of nothing. If I’m upset at something he said or did, I will sit down and try to calmly discuss why it made me sad. He will usually start raising his voice and say it’s not fair and I’m making him out to be an asshole and I’m making things up and I’m mishearing things and misremembering things.
One time I was using a tin opener on a tin of peas. I knocked the tin a bit without realising and a bit of water was leaking onto the kitchen counter. (I should preface I’m not usually this slow, this was during the flare up I mentioned earlier and I could barely stay awake so my reflexes weren’t the best) he yelled “STOP!!!” And pushed me out the way. When I realised, I got some tissue and immediately started cleaning it and apologising profusely. He wasn’t responding and was just sighing, not looking at me and looked furious. I kept saying sorry and he kept ignoring me. I started crying and once I started I just couldn’t stop, I felt so stupid and I was so upset at myself for making him angry with me again. He then told me to be quiet and said “you’re being ridiculous, you’re acting like I hit you.”

- he only apologises to end arguments. His friend made a rude remark to me at a gathering and he said nothing, just ignored it. Afterwards I asked why he didn’t stand up for me, because I don’t know them very well and it was awkward for me as I didn’t know what to say. He said he didn’t hear it at first, and then he went on to say he did actually hear it but I’m overreacting and they didn’t mean anything by it, and I’m misremembering and that’s not actually what they said at all, and then he finally said okay they did say that and I did hear but I didn’t want to draw attention to it. I said that all it did was draw attention to me and it made me really uncomfortable and only when I didn’t let it go, he apologised. But he only seems to apologise so that we stop arguing, or so that I stay with him.

- I don’t know who he actually is. Sometimes, he will just say something incredibly cruel and out of character. I’ll cry, he’ll get mad that I’m upset. And then hours or days later, he’ll say “oh my god that was horrible of me, I’m so sorry. I don’t know where that came from.” He always says he doesn’t know where it comes from. I don’t either. I don’t know which one is the real him, or if what I do will make him mad, or if he’ll comfort me this time when I cry. He always tells me I deserve better and that he’s horrible to me. I don’t think I deserve better, I’m absolutely terrified that there’s something in me that just brings out the worst in men. I’m worried if I leave him, I’ll ruin something else. Because I’m stupid or annoying or whatever.

- my self esteem is the lowest it’s ever been. I feel like I’m half of who I used to be. My hair’s fallen out, I’ve gained weight, I’m tired and bored all the time. Nothing interests me, I don’t enjoy talking to people anymore. I don’t even want anyone to see me in public because I feel so hideous. I used to love my life. Isn’t a relationship supposed to make it easier??? I’m so scared I’ll never be happy again. And I’m just blaming myself because I don’t think this is his fault at all, I think I’m just like this all of a sudden. And I’m starting to feel nothing for him. I don’t believe anything he says anymore, I don’t feel safe emotionally with him. I feel like I’m just going through the motions of the relationship and I feel like if I cook for him and clean for him enough, if I make myself look pretty for him, if I try to be as interesting as I used to be then he will stop getting so angry with me. But at this point I’m terrified that no one could ever love me.

- he’s rude to me on purpose. He will often stop listening to me mid sentence and walk away. He’ll purposely do a straight face if I make a joke or he’ll fake yawn. Yesterday we were getting out of his car and I said wait a second, I need to get something. I took it from his car and went to catch up with him, but he kept walking. As I was just about to catch up with him, he turned around and looked at me, and then had a smug look on his face and just kept walking faster. I had to run to catch up with him and everybody saw. I felt so pathetic. I just wanted to hold his hand.

But the thing is, this is only half of the time. Half of the time, he’s lovely. If I’m upset about something unrelated to him he will sympathise and comfort me. When I’m sick, he’s kind of indifferent but he is always there for me when I need his help. When I moved house, he spent all day helping me carry stuff and deep clean the house. He didn’t ask for anything in return. He’s kind to my family, he remembers things I tell him, he writes love letters when I’ve asked him to before. And he’s never mean about my weight. Also, one time when I was having a bad period, he brought chocolate and iced coffee back from the shop without me even asking and didn’t even ask me to pay him back for it. This kind of stuff makes me question if the relationship is even unhealthy or if this is normal lovers spats. I just really need someone’s guidance. I need to know what to think. I don’t trust myself anymore. Please, is this normal??? I feel so helpless

Sorry this is probably an unusual post. I have been with my bf for 2 years and got diagnosed with PCOS about six months into the relationship after a massive flare up like I’d never experienced before. I’d always had some mild symptoms: irregular periods, slower metabolism, painful periods etc. But I suddenly gained a lot of weight, lost my period, I’m bloated all the time, fatigued, nauseous and I am still losing a lot of hair. I’m currently on metformin, changed my diet completely, do strength training and am currently seeking out birth control to lower my androgens. However, not a lot seems to be working.

I’ve recently come to the realisation that I think my relationship might be unhealthy, for unrelated reasons. Little things like lack of care for my wellbeing, raises his voice at me if I try to discuss something that upset me, criticises my PCOS symptoms (specifically hair growth, he is always asking me to pluck my chest. I try to keep up with it but there are often one or two that I miss and he always brings it up.) He’s criticised my vagina, he often speaks with contempt in his voice which he denies but really it does feel like he just does not like me much as an individual. He can be condescending, smug, sarcastic with me when I make a mistake. He calls me stupid and then backtracks and says he’s joking. He gets annoyed with me by small mistakes and often snaps at me. One time he snapped at me for spilling something by mistake. I went immediately to clean it and it was only a bit of water that’d spilled out of a tin of veg on the counter. He kept sighing and complaining and when I started crying he said “you’re acting like I hit you.”
When we were first dating (two months ish) he said “I feel like you like me a lot more than I like you.” After that I felt insecure about how he felt about me and it took a while to believe he did like me. He brings it up to this day that I’ve been insecure from the start, but fails to realise that I was only doubting myself after he said that. He gaslit me for two years about his porn addiction and made me believe I was going crazy and paranoid. He’s selfish in bed, when I brought up that I felt neglected he raised his voice at me and said that I’m exaggerating and it’s not true. Today after another argument I realised that the amount of time I’ve spent crying in this relationship is not normal. On average I probably cry from something he’s said or done, about twice a week.
This timeline matches up with when my flare up began. Can the stress of an unhealthy relationship worsen PCOS symptoms? Am I exaggerating and it’s actually quite a normal relationship? I’m completely at a loss as my health is worsening and not getting any better despite my efforts. I always look tired and drained of life and day to day I feel I’m just going through the motions.

This is Tmi and I don’t know if it’s allowed in this sub so, content warning for mentions of sex.

Through our whole relationship, my bf has loved giving me head. He used to beg to do it all the time and I felt so desired, I loved it. However a couple of months ago, it was after my period finished, and I don’t know if this is normal anymore but I always get clear, thick (discharge?) stuff like the week after my period finishes. I always heard that it was the vagina’s way of being self cleaning but idk if I was wrong. I just thought it was normal. Anyway, he noticed there was some there and wanted to stop. That was completely okay. However I’m a bit worried that it’s been months and he’s completely stopped wanting to even go down there. I shower every day and keep it clean, I’ve asked if it smells bad and he says no. Eventually he told me that it grossed him out and he doesn’t want to go down there anymore because to him it’s the equivalent of eating ass and there being crap in there.

I would never want to pressure or guilt anyone into a sexual act so I’ve just left it. I just feel so disgusting and unattractive about something I thought was completely normal and natural but now I’m doubting it. It’s only there about once a month but still he’s completely checked out of that. He stays completely above my waist now, he doesn’t even want to touch it with his hands. To be honest, I can’t finish with penetration so that was the one thing that got me off. Now, we have sex, he finishes, he’s tired so we just lie there and it’s over. I told him I feel a bit neglected sexually and he got mad at me and said that’s really unfair. But god I just miss feeling desirable and like he couldn’t get enough of my body. I really need some advice for how to deal with this emotionally because it’s getting to me :(

Edit: thank you all for your lovely responses. I was up all night reading them and actually researching how the vagina works and I’m angry that this isn’t common knowledge and isn’t taught in sex ed to both men and women. A thing I forgot to mention is that he also has had a massive porn addiction for the entire 2 years we’ve been together and I only recently found out because he wasn’t touching me anymore, never wanted sex and was being quite hateful to me for seemingly no reason. About six months ago I’d been having problems with my PCOS where sex was becoming painful. I was in and out of different doctors surgeries trying to find a fix for it, but during that time I was doing my best to try to keep him satisfied, with head, or really anything else that wasn’t penetration. He was never interested the whole time. Come to find out, during that time, he’d been sneaking off to the bathroom while I was still sleeping every morning to watch porn, and then coming back to kiss me on the forehead and wake me up. He gaslit me for about a year, saying it was in my head and he’d never do that to me. Since then he has been 30 days clean of porn but I do wonder if I’m still being compared to pornstars. I think he’s probably disappointed he’s had to give up his fantasy and return to the reality of menstrual cycles, discharge, a girlfriend who isn’t always glammed up and shaved etc. I’ve tried to keep him satisfied because I know I’m lacking compared to other girls, and we did come to an understanding this morning. I said I’d shave more, pluck my chest (PCOS symptom) so that there are never any hairs, wear makeup etc. Just try to keep things mysterious and exciting again. But oh my god I’m the only one attempting to fix things. He’s never once come to me and ask if there’s anything I needed, anything he can do to make sex more pleasurable for me. I wish my natural body was enough.

I feel like I’ve noticed a difference in people in the last ten years. I live in the UK and we’ve always been a miserable bunch but there’s always been a standard of etiquette: doing the awkward half-jog and a wave if a car stops to let you cross the road, holding the door for someone, thanking the bus driver, waiting for people to get off the bus/train before barging on, saying excuse me or apologising if you’re in someone’s way, etc. I’ve noticed such a huge drop-off in these niceties. Now, where I live, people don’t smile, or even look at anyone. People will barge past like you’re not even there, they won’t offer up their seats to elderly people, they’ll let the door swing in your face… I don’t know if it’s even any correlation, but I just feel like social media and the internet in general has closed off people’s peripheral vision.

And I understand the cost of living has worsened while living standards here are quite bleak. The housing is crap (I’m a broke uni student, I do get it) Jobs are scarce. But I always try to be nice to people. And it feels like people (and I am generalising but it really is most people I encounter) only really consider themselves. Every lecture I go to for Uni, people are just talking and laughing over the lecturer.

The reason I feel it stems from social media is I noticed it online first before it bled into real life. Particularly from my generation (Gen Z). It feels like a lack of empathy and consideration for others has been repackaged and marketed as “self care” or “setting boundaries”. Not smiling at children, not being there for your friends. Listening to someone’s problems is now them “trauma dumping” on you. I saw a post by a girl my age saying that if you’re mentally ill, you’re a bad friend. Even if you don’t project it on anyone and keep it to yourself, people still are affected by your “bad vibes” and insecurity. The comments were full of young people saying they’ll cut off friends who are struggling, because it’s not their problem and it ruins their peace. Since when is it not my problem if a friend is going through something? Surely any problem they have, if they share it, is mine as well and we fix it together.

Humans are pack animals, we are built for community. But I just feel like we’re losing our sense of community. It’s like, instead of social media bringing people together like it was supposed to, it’s driven people apart to their own secluded algorithms where they’re shown what to look at, what to think of it, what to say, how to act.

I'm 21 and my iPhone is on its way out, and I absolutely do not want to have another iPhone or smartphone ever again. The world is going to shit and I am TIRED of all the AI being shoved down my throat on every app, I'm tired of being listened to and shown certain things on my algorithm, I'm tired of the weight loss ads everywhere and I've noticed I'm a much angrier and insecure person with this constant social media access. I already use a cassette Walkman and CD player instead of Spotify because I didn't want to send any more of my money to another awful corporation every month and I don't have any more subscriptions. In terms of contacts, I have a little address book that I write down phone numbers in and I usually only use gmail on my computer anyway.

However I have a few major problems:

1. I am a university student and the student portal app we use requires us to use a two factor authentication every time we log in, so I need the microsoft authenticator app. (Although I do not want to support Microsoft at all) This is not just university either, I find that passwords aren't enough anymore. I need to verify everything, including on the NHS app (no matter how many times I request it to remember me, it never does), a lot of things require passkeys (whatever these are), etc. It seems to me that the world is hellbent on making a lot of things inaccessible without a smartphone, like when American cities ruined their infrastructure and public transport to convince people to buy personal cars.

2. I do rely on Google Maps a lot, I have ADHD and my sense of direction is useless so I use this as a crutch often. I'm sure I could get used to it eventually but it is a source of comfort to me when I'm in unfamiliar places.

3. JOBS. At my last job, they required me to clock in using an app. Not to mention the job search is all online.

4. I'm an art student, and trying to establish an illustration career, meaning a lot of my networking is online, specifically on Instagram.

As well as this, for Uni group projects, we usually communicate through group chats on Instagram and Whatsapp. This is the same for the house group chat with my roommates.

There seems to be a lot of obstacles. The ones that are just inconvient, I could get used to, but the QR codes and verification codes everywhere make me feel like it's almost impossible in today's world. I just desperately do not want to have another smart phone. The constant technology being shoved down my throat makes me so depressed and like I'm just living to be fed a curated algorithm. I feel so overwhelmed and I need to slow down. I need to not have the internet in my pocket at all times, I'm not built for it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, sorry for the very very very long post. I have a lot of thoughts about this lol