u/jenaemare

A lighter post amongst all the torment we suffer at the hands of our situationships...

Basically my situationship is a very goofy man from an artistic family, he and his brother are involved in theatre and his brother still works as a professional clown. They own a unicycle and sometimes they ride it unironically through town.

My situationship has taken a break from theatre & clowning (but never from clownery). Still, he has maintained that vibe and he always tells me to see the funny part of life. I am a serious girl, so for me, he is like a manic pixie dream boy who takes me out of the harsh reality and makes me laugh with his goofy demeanor.

However, at the end of the day, even with his official clowning experience, I am still the clowned one for wanting more and only getting breadcrumbs 💔🤡

I've tried therapy for a while and did some work to get me out of a crisis (triggered by the worst breakup I've ever had with the man I thought I was going to marry, my parents being disappointed instead of supportive, and dealing with long term unemployment all at once).

I generally have, and have always had, an extremely deep self loathing, I only went to therapy because my friends were begging me but I don't even believe I deserve to be happy so at the end of the day I feel like all therapy did was stir the shit on the surface and make me only hate myself even more.

I found a drawing in my old childhood room, that I made around 7 years old, of myself as a very aesthetically monstrous creature and the page was filled with sentences like: "jenaemare is ugly, stupid, idiot, good for nothing". I was a child yet this was my representation of myself.

I keep hearing about becoming the adult to protect your inner child. When I read about this concept I immediately thought that I hate that child, and I would lock them in a dark bathroom and starve them to death.

What's wrong with me? Has anyone else ever healed or managed to convince themselves that they deserve healing, coming from such a deep place of self loathing?

I was never verbally abused or openly hated by my parents but they were emotionally neglectful and I remember them never being satisfied with anything I did, I am now a 30 year old woman, in no contact with them because it got too unbearable for me after 3 decades of never being good enough.

I was a very wanted child, my mother was already 35 and she welcomed me into a very good material situation, took me to the best private schools at the time, and made sure that all my wishes come true. Sometimes, I didn't feel like their child, but like their "project" to show off to others. My father has always spoiled me financially as well. However, they slapped me here and there as a child (Eastern European culture), but I don't think they ever addressed these words that I was addressing to myself as early as 7 years old. I just don't understand how I was born with this deep self hatred, where does it come from?

However instead of wanting to protect and heal this sensitive part of me that never made her parents happy, I just want to further destroy it.

I've tried everything - dating other guys, keeping him out of my life, removing from social media

I can't, I still see myself through his eyes. Being his woman has been my only wish for a year now.

It sounds silly when people ask me why I have been single for a year now. I say I'm just not ready for a relationship. But the truth is... I'm waiting. Waiting for him to want me back.

It sounds even sillier when I truly put words to what I feel: being with other men feels like treason to the feelings I have for him.

Nothing else feels valuable

It's been a year since our first kiss. We hooked up lots of times until I made the mistake of confessing my feelings. Since then he's been avoiding me and we only slept together twice in 3 months. It hurts but it still feels better to know I'm waiting for him to be ready for a relationship than trying to be with someone else. I could not live with the guilt that I did not give him enough time. That I did not have enough patience.

On the surface I'm doing the right things like focusing on my life, improving my looks & I am not reaching out to him in any way. But emotionally I'm waiting for him and I will be for a long time...

Anyone else?

I'm living in a foreign country and this is the first friend from back home that visited me so I was happy about it but I ran into an unexpected situation.

I knew that she had some issues around food. She has a history of disordered eating and currently she has all the symptoms of binge eating disorder (I know because I had it too)

As far as I remember BED, I used to plan and eat huge quantities of food in privacy and it was shameful. But I would have never eaten another person's food just because I wanted it; and I definitely would have respected other people's portions whenever I'd have a shared meal situation.

The first red flag when my friend visited was exactly on arrival when my flatmates. They are a couple that always cooks and eats together, sometimes I join them for lunch but I always cook my own meals - sometimes we'll share things like cookies, hummus, fruits.

This time they were cooking a delicious rice with veggies and meat. My friend goes: "So what do you do if they cook something so good and you crave it too?" I said "I don't know, it's a good thing because it gives me ideas! I guess I go out and buy the ingredients for it and make it." She said:

"isn't it painful when others eat something that you crave and you can't have it?"

I was like... Painful??? No, maybe it's a bit uncomfortable but still it's a normal human emotion to crave food and it can be lived through or solved, I don't know what is to suffer about. I think at this point she was already triggered because I told her I do intermittent fasting and eat twice a day. She used to know me before I moved countries when we had BED adjacent behaviours together.

I'm so sorry if I sound invalidating, but I remember during my worst BED waves that craving others foods would just serve as inspiration for future binges but it was far from a painful feeling.

The next evening I had a group hangout with my friends on my rooftop and she wanted to have dinner. She hid in the living room down stairs to eat her food because she didn't want the chance of anyone asking to try her fries. I thought it was weird and very antisocial behaviour but I didn't want to trigger her ED so I let her. She has this almost entitlement to ask for other people's foods, but when it's her turn to have her meal she hides in order to not share it.

I tried to be very careful because I remember a long time ago, when we had a common dinner with lots of people, she wanted seconds and somebody told her to not take too much because others deserve seconds too. She stopped eating and cried at the table and left. She told me she cannot handle anyone telling her how much she can or cannot eat - so I have been on thin ice the whole week to my financial and mental detriment.

We split the groceries half half, but she ate more than 3 quarters of it. I do portion control, intermittent fasting and eat once or twice a day so I physically couldn't keep up with her meals and she ended up eating a lot more, thinking that the food I had left for my portions and wanted to stretch out for multiple days, were actually free for the taking. It also gave me a sense of food anxiety about finishing my entire meal because I like to save leftovers, but she'd kinda seem almost triggered around this and say that I should eat it all, that it will be bad after, etc.

I bought two foods that she said she will NOT LIKE, and she ended up eating more than half of both. They were for me for at least a week's worth of food and now they're half empty. I'm in a bad financial situation and I cannot afford to eat half a kilo of yogurt in 2 days. However I was trapped the whole week to not say anything because I knew how sensitive the topic was.

We also went to a Latino party place where they play music the whole night and dance but also they serve food. She said it's so weird to have food around when you want to party.

What personally really bothered me is that I made a bigger meal to share and when we had leftovers I wanted to offer to my flatmate. Even if she had said she is full she literally ate the last piece and said "how can you leave this to your flatmates instead of eating it yourself? Fine I'll eat it".

Hopefully she leaves today and now I'll be left to intermittent fast & portion control even more to pick up the financial pieces of my food sharing bills of this week.

But I feel exhausted mentally after holding my tongue for so long about how I feel about her behaviour and I also feel financially f*cked because how is it fair to split the food bill equally and then she eats most of it? Just because leftovers were in the fridge didn't mean it was for her since it was my half of the portions, but that's how she interpreted it.

I also accept i don't have great boundaries around this and I wasn't more firm with her because I used to be obese and suffer from BED and food comments from others would send me spiraling. But as I repeated in the beginning - my binging would've never intruded into other's portions.

Could I have handled this differently? Am I a horrible friend and an asshole for being bothered about this?

I've been having feelings for this guy for a year now, we are in a hobby group together & used to go out with a larger social group and end up sleeping together a couple times.

He expressed that he's not ready for a relationship, he never thought a woman like me would want him because I'm a very well educated immigrant who speaks 3 languages and he has barely left his hometown and is a construction worker. I'm not saying all of this to boast, just to objectively describe our differences.

He struggles with erectile dysfunction, alcoholism, smokes weed everyday & I've heard gossip that he might be a coke addict as well. He is still very much obsessed with his ex girlfriend, even if they broke up 2-3 years ago.

He likes me just enough to sleep with me and ocassionally make out. We have fun in the hobby group and when we go out. But I feel like he sees me as the type of woman who SHOULDN'T look at him and he just won't let himself receive my love.

It hurts and I've been giving chances to other men that are supposed to be "on my level" and I feel nothing. I only want this one but he won't have me more than sporadic hookups.

The worst part is that I used to act cold and he would seek me for hookups every week. After I confessed my feelings we only hooked up 2 more times in 2 months.. and now it's been more than a month. I'm pretty sure he's pulling away because I was too intense and I made him seek distance.

Damn, it just hurts a lot.

Soon it will be a year since my (30F) first kiss with a friend (35M) that resulted in a year long affair of sometimes hooking up weeks In a row and then weeks of disappearing from intimacy on his side.

Unfortunately I am in a complicated situation - I'm a vulnerable immigrant that has a social circle that I have to protect because otherwise I lose lots of opportunities and the feeling of belonging.

He is part of one of my main social groups & hobby group.

I confessed my feelings and he doesn't return them or want anything serious. I told him at first to cut it off but it was painful. I would see him anyway and suffer so bad I had to go home to cry a couple times. So I told him to sleep together again but I think me sharing my feelings made him more distant and now he barely sleeps with me once a month.

He told me to be with other men but I just can't. Even if he's just a hookup, I wake up thinking of him and go to bed thinking of him. I now know sleeping with him is a very rare opportunity. I won't beg him for it even if I wish I did. He usually rejects me when I ask him to come over and only shows up when he wants.

The problem is that I've also developed a sexual obsession with him and I won't even masturbate anymore because having orgasms reminds me of being with him. This is sick, right? I can't even look at my own naked body without imagining how he sees it, and remembering his hands touching me. This has been going on for months. I don't know how to get rid of it. I feel possessed. Even my closest friends are worried about the toll this situation took on me.

I've also lost a lot of weight. Yesterday all I had was a sandwich and like 40g of pasta salad the whole day. And drank a lot at night. I have been living like this for a long time because I am a thick girl and his ex girlfriends were all skinny. I just cannot be with myself if I know my body is not to his liking. Even if he touches it once every 2 months, it's all worth it.

As you can see I've gone feral and I don't know how to stop it. I'm writing poems and songs about him. I'm obsessively drawing him. I even tried doing a love spell on him.

I cannot stop exposing myself to him because I need this social group to be connected to the community.

However, I'm so exhausted of having him in my mind all the time. I just want to be able to focus on other things, or even on myself, but without seeing myself through his eyes...

Does it ever go away?

Maybe I'm also very disorganized attached & i have also been raised by parents who showed me love only when I was actively working for their affection and not just because I was their child.

I've unpacked this in therapy but I have not been able to afford more than a year of it...

I started therapy last year after leaving my 9-month emotionally, verbally & physically abusive situationship. My leaving didn't cause me to feel any better or free from a person who doesn't deserve me - it led me into an almost year long of self blame, self hate, a lot of indirect self harm through substance abuse...

Only because I could never accept the decision I had taken: to leave him before I had given my all. I rationally understand why it was the best decision but emotionally it feels like the worst thing I could ever do.

I imagined letting him go meant making space for a real secure relationship. But then when I met actual healthy and secure potential partners I felt nothing for them.

I then began a new situationship which somehow is better and worse at the same time. My new guy isn't abusive but he is neglectful AF. We don't text for weeks, and we used to meet weekly to have sex, now he meets me once a month at most and says that he can't offer me more.

I tried leaving him. I told him I deserve better than this, and felt powerful in the moment. 3 weeks later the whole feeling from last year came back. All the self hate, the regret, the not being able to forgive myself for not giving my all. So I texted him to ignore my crash out and to resume sleeping with me. This was in March, he has only slept with me twice since then. However there is literally NO WAY i see myself cutting this off. I would never forgive myself.

After I left my abusive situationship last year I promised myself I would never leave anyone again unless my life was at direct risk. Neglect is definitely not enough to make me walk away.

How can you leave your situationships without feeling as if you didn't give your all? How do you not hate yourselves after leaving?

EDIT: please do not waste your time telling me to leave because I won't. I just want to vent into the void, and read other people's points of view regarding how you all managed to leave and be okay with your choice.

They were right. I did hit the wall. My skin is all droopy and my meat is so soft. I have always hated my body but now even worse. I fell last year and my knees always hurt. I cannot do any physical movement unless I'm seated or not moving my legs too much.

My gaze is dead - you can see I have no more life or love left. I used to be a happy young girl who really thought her life would make sense by this age.

I haven't felt good in my own skin since I turned 23. I don't understand how women say their best years after 30. I don't even want to continue living. I'm not going to end it (don't send me Reddit cares notifications), but I just don't want anything anymore.

I've always romanticized teen years. I was watching teen series until my late 20s, never fully able to move on from the charm of that era. My best years were unironically from 15-22. I don't recognize myself in this old body. I hate feeling so different inside than what I see in the mirror. I definitely don't see reasons to continue existing.

Single, broke, unmarried, childless at 30. For what? I'm useless and a waste of space.

Anyone else feel the same way please I'm going crazy. All women around me either lie about loving their 30s or they're just living in a very delusional bubble.