u/pxelluvsricecakes

I feel so uncomfortable when I get into a position where I have to say “I love you” especially with my parents. Because, I know I’m not only lying to them but I’m lying to myself. I have a girlfriend and I feel like I have to say I love you to her, it makes me so uncomfortable.

I usually feel no remorse for lying or throwing around words and shit but specifically with this, I feel somewhat bad for lying about such a strong emotion.

I’ve never felt genuine love, I really don’t think I have. I throw the term “I love you” around so much, it has lost real meaning to me.

I think this 100% stems from my narcissistic traits and lack of sympathy/empathy.

I feel as though I have masked how I truly feel for so long, to the point I have lost all reality of myself. I have no concept of who I am beyond the character I play in front of others. I am very performative, I always have been, this is a direct result of my narcissism and always needing attention. I crave attention so deeply, especially positive attention. And I would not consider myself a good person, so the only way for me to achieve somewhat positive attention is by completely masking and faking who I am.

This has started to affect my relationships and friendships. At this point I don’t even care about my friends as people and I don’t feel like I truly love my girlfriend. I mask so well to the point that they believe I care for them, when I, deep down, do not.

I enjoy my girlfriend’s presence because I know she’ll always affirm my needs for attention. And, if I have a partner or friend who can’t do that, I will find some kind of reason to drop them, because that is how fragile my ego is.

CW: Mention of gore , homicidal ideation , true crime (please inform me if I missed any warnings that need to be included)

I have always lacked sympathy. I only started noticing this around 2023 when I was at my ex girlfriend’s house and she mentioned watching gore. I noticed that she could not even look at the photos/videos, meanwhile I had no issue doing so. Now, the problem with this circumstance wasn’t me not really minding bloody photos, it was the fact I learned about the stories behind the photos she was showing me and I couldn’t bring myself to care or feel anything towards the victims or the photos. I genuinely didn’t care. This realization furthered in mid 2025 when I got very into true crime. I was very into crime cases, especially murder. As I would listen to these cases, I could not find myself feeling bad for the victims, and instead resonated more with the perpetrators. This lead to me experiencing extremely bad homicidal ideation and impulsive thoughts of these crimes. While yes, everybody thinks about killing, especially if they are very mad or in their emotions. But, these thoughts were constant and went further than intrusive thoughts and impulses, it felt as though they took over my life during that period. Eventually I had to step back from true crime because it was taking over my mind and I felt close to committing something. People do believe I’m sympathetic, I know they do. I’m a vegetarian and that causes people to think I’m some sweet animal lover, when I’m really not. The most prominent victims I have thought about while experiencing homicidal thoughts are cats. A newer case of this happening was actually just last night. My girlfriend came over and we ended up having a pretty deep conversation! She explained her trauma to me, she told me about something horrible that somebody in her life had done to her. I genuinely had to pretend to feel bad. And the only thing I felt bad for in the situation was the fact I couldn’t bring myself to care that this happened to her.

The only time I’d say I experience some kind of sympathy is I feel bad for my own mistakes if they happen to hurt somebody else. But, at the same time this feeling is kind of rare and does not occur for all my mistakes that hurt others.

I don’t care about war victims, I don’t care when people die, I don’t feel like I genuinely love my cat or would care if she disappeared, and I only cry for myself and my own pitiful feelings. I’m ashamed of the person I’ve become, honestly.

At this point, my “sympathy” feels straight performative. Every time somebody tells me something I feel like I’d need real sympathy to care about, I have to pretend to care and feel bad. I don’t feel sorry for anybody but myself, it’s a horrible trait I have and I have no idea what to do about it. I feel like I’ve always been this way.

I’ve been struggling with food since late 2025. It didn’t get extremely bad until January though. The whole January I had a horrible ED, purging + starving. Then around late January I started to eat again, and this continued until mid February, when I fell back into the habit of starving and purging. At this point I had lost a lot of weight, it was the most damage my ED ever caused, and I lost the pounds in a short amount of time. But that’s when I decided I wanted to recover. so I started trying to recover on my own. And as of now it just feels like this never ending loop of falling in and out of the habits. I’ve been trying hard to stay out of them but it’s just making me over-eat. I haven’t checked the scale in over a month, I’m too scared and I know if I do I’ll just start starving myself all over again! I feel like if I wanted to stop eating now, I couldn’t. But, I know eventually I’ll get back into the habit and I’m scared for when I do. The only reason I haven’t lost weight from my ED and why it isn’t really affecting me is because it’s so on and off. I already impulsively eat, it’s intensified a lot more since my body has been so deprived over the past few months. So, do y’all also have this issue of it being on and off too?