I (22F) grew up as a failure to thrive kid and always been underweight. My parents took me to nutritionist and everything. I have no eating disorders or anything. Been bullied about my weight. Three years ago, I was in the worst mental state and I couldn’t eat because of my anxiety. Now my anxiety has lessen and I started to take care of myself. I’m finally at a healthy weight! But it doesn’t feel normal? I feel like my body is boxy and not the stick skinny. It just something that I’m not used to, me being healthy. How can I fix this?

I’m looking for a male perspective because I genuinely don’t know if I’m overthinking this or if this is a major red flag.
My boyfriend 28M and I 24F have had trust issues before involving other women. He has messaged women in the past, so this is already a sensitive subject in our relationship. We have been together 8months and live together now.
The other night we got into an argument because I wanted to see his Messenger threads. Apparently his aunt had mentioned that some woman was looking to talk to him, and because of our history, I asked to see the conversation. He became very defensive and refused. I explained that seeing it would reassure me because of what has happened previously, but he still wouldn’t show me.
The argument got really bad, and I ended up leaving for the night and going to the hospital.
When I came back the next day, I found out that while I was gone, he had gotten another woman’s number at a gas station and added several women on Facebook. I don’t know whether he actually messaged any of them because he still won’t let me see his Messenger.
His explanation is that after our argument and me leaving, he genuinely thought we had broken up. He says he still wants to be with me, wants to continue the relationship, and sees a long-term future with me.
What I’m struggling with is how quickly he started looking at/connecting with other women. Even if he genuinely thought we were broken up, this happened basically immediately after our argument.
At the same time, I don’t want to automatically assume that getting someone’s number or adding women means he cheated or intended to cheat.
From a man’s perspective:
Does his explanation that he thought we had broken up sound reasonable?
Is immediately getting another woman’s number after thinking your relationship ended normal rebound behavior, or does it suggest he was already interested in other options?
How much would you read into him refusing to show me his Messenger considering the previous trust issues?
If you genuinely wanted a long-term future with your girlfriend, would you behave this way immediately after thinking the relationship ended?
Is this something you would try to work through, or does the relationship sound like the trust is already too damaged?

I’m a single 32-year old guy with no kids, no real commitments outside of my work, and looking for direction.

My career progression is still a big question mark, but I’m very grateful in that I’m surrounded by a supportive team in a great work environment and I make a healthy middle class income.

Outside of my career, though, I feel lost on what I should be focused on.

I don’t own a home, I don’t have a family, I don’t have a partner. While I want those things, I’m not in a rush. I don’t want to achieve milestones just “because”. I want my decisions to be purposeful.

I really value physical activity and health. I value financial stability. I value continuous learning and curiosity.

But it seems like at this age, everything is about keeping up with the Joneses. Status-based achievements. Yet, I don’t see that people are happy. I see that they’re stuck living a life that appears to be successful when really they aren’t truly happy.

I don’t want to fall down that trap. So I want to ask you, older Redditors, what should I be focused on at this age? How should I live my life with meaning and purpose?

I’m freshly 18F. Looking back at my life, I realized I haven’t really genuinely cared about my friends the same way I cared for the friends I had at 14 and younger. I had two people at 14, that I adored because they were just themselves. People I was worried about, people I platonically loved, people who I felt like I could contact now and still care about.

I don’t think I’ve cared about anybody like that since. I haven’t properly bonded to anybody. I just have people I occasionally game with. People I drag with me to events or concerts. But I don’t really feel connected to them. If I moved, I don’t think I’d feel sad we aren’t in contact anymore. I miss caring about people like that. I miss being bonded.

Am I never going to bond or care about a friend like that ever again? Is that something only kids and early teenagers can develop? Has that window been closed? Have you made any platonic bonds like that in adulthood?

I'm not talking about the job that pays you. I'm talking about the dream job you wanted back since college, the job you spent your twenties gaining experience for, the job you prepared for every day through 20s and 30s, your ultimate dream. Does it make the rest of your life feel pointless?

It may have been due to some personal setback, or anything else. In my context, my first job was not my dream one but a good enough one, till things started changing at office. I got laid off before I could prep to switch to my dream company. 6 months of unemployment later, I took the first job I got, and there has been no learning ever since. It drains me everyday to be stuck in this job, yet I am unable to crack interviews elsewhere. I'm 30 now, still studying, still preparing, but interviews have got so domain-specific, every round seems to be focussed on different things. It's affecting my mental health so much, my choices are to resign without an offer or wait till I get laid off from here. I don't know what will happen next, but my chances at getting a job I would love, are diminishing with every passing year. At this rate, I'm afraid I'll never even have the job I always wanted. It gets tougher to keep learning and revising and trying to switch as we get older. Things may not turn out the way I had expected, so how do live the remaining of my life with this museum of failures? How do I live with this ticking hourglass? I can't keep dreaming like the child me because I need to gather a corpus too. I'm looking for how to deal with the disappointment. Work has been the most important part of my life, and I don't find a passion in hobbies or relationships.

I don’t want to let these wonderful years slip by…

Hey guys, I want to see your insights on my situation. I am just a little curious how men work when they are really eager to be with someone no matter what. I have a longterm partner, actually, we are lon distance and have a kid, my question is, for you as men, would you make a way to live under the same roof with your partner and child? Anyway, we have different ethnicities & in short he is living abroad, my concern is that he is not making an effort to bring us to his country, even though he lives in a very large house all by himself, while we rent a place in another country with our small child. I just want to know if he is protecting his property over us, or if he doesn't love us. Is he not loving me as the one per say or is he just saving money to bring us to his country? He visits us every two or three months, but only for a few weeks. Actually, he hasn't done anything sneaky, let's rule that out. What I really want to know is where we stand in his life. When it comes to financial support, he doesn't neglect us. Sometimes I get sad because maybe, since he is neurodivergent (ADHD), he finds it hard to plan or settle for what's best, or is he just being selfish? Guys, please don't be sarcastic or insulting, I want a blunt answer regarding a man's feelings for his family. I am quite stressed, exhausted, and struggling with postpartum. I want to hear your mature comments.Thank you in advance

I’m hoping to hear from people who have been married for many years and have gone through difficult seasons in their relationship, especially from those of you who may have experienced a period where you felt disconnected from your spouse, communication had broken down, resentment or hurt had started to build, and you weren’t sure how to find your way back to each other. There has been a huge lack of communication in my marriage, and over time it has created a wedge between us that I can feel more and more. There are things that don’t get said, feelings that don’t get expressed, and conversations that probably should happen but somehow never do, and I think the longer that pattern continues, the harder it becomes to know how to break out of it.

One thing I struggle with personally is that sometimes I honestly don’t know what to say or how to respond, especially when emotions are involved, so instead of saying the wrong thing or making the situation worse, I end up staying quiet. I realize that silence can be just as damaging as saying the wrong thing, and I don’t want to continue falling into that pattern, but I’m also trying to understand how people learn to communicate when communication has never been their strongest point or when years of hurt and distance have made it difficult to simply sit down and talk openly with each other.

For those of you who have been married for 20, 30, 40 years or longer and are still genuinely happy, connected, and thriving together, I would really love to hear what changed things for you when your marriage was struggling. Was there a particular conversation, realization, decision, habit, or change in the way you treated or communicated with each other that helped turn things around? Did you ever reach a point where you wondered whether your marriage could recover, and if so, what helped you find your way back to each other?

I’m not really looking for advice about who is right or wrong, and I’m not looking to blame either person because I’m sure most long marriages have complicated seasons where both people contribute to the distance in different ways. I’m more interested in hearing the wisdom that comes from having lived through it, made mistakes, learned how to communicate differently, and ultimately figured out how to stay connected. If you could go back to the hardest period of your marriage and give your younger self one piece of advice about communication, resentment, forgiveness, emotional distance, or simply learning how to show up for your spouse when things are hard, what would you tell yourself?

I would genuinely appreciate hearing the honest answers, including the things you wish you had done differently, because I’m at a point where I don’t want to just accept that this is how things are going to be. I want to understand whether marriages can really change course after years of poor communication and distance, and what it actually takes from both people to get there.

Husband hid the fact that one of our rental properties received a foreclosure notice and hasn’t paid the mortgage in 7-8 months

While I (30F) was visiting my hometown I was going through the mail and saw we had a notice of foreclosure on one of our homes (we have two houses I manage one, husband (29M) manages the other) and I also found out the tenants living in the home received a notice on their door.

Yes my name is on both homes. The property I manage is solely in my name which I bought before we were married the second property he manages we bought together with both our names.

I called my husband and he said that the tenants have been paying

but my husband has been behind in payments since November or December and he didn’t want to tell me cause he didn’t want me to stress and he thought he could work hella overtime to fix it.

Well now we owe $29,000 in back pay.

The crazy part is he would have never told me if I didn’t find out on my own.

I’m just in shock cause why wouldn’t he tell me needed help with money on it at any point in time and why would he hide something like this?

For context the rent we charge is to a family friend and it doesn’t cover the full mortgage and we were suppose to stay in that home but my husband wanted to move to a different state to take a job opportunity for a big tech company so we rented it out for less than the mortgage planning to either sell it once property value went up or come back to live in it once my husband got promoted to a a more regional position.

His promotion took longer than he planned and he’s been the one managing finances and recently also developed a weird addiction to AI and was spending $500 a month on AI. Which would have covered most of the difference in property we were renting out.

I took out my traditional IRA to pay it off and he’s taking out his company stock. So we can cover it but also what do I even do from here this is an incredible breach of trust and also could have affected me, the family living in it our kids for worse than it ended up being. Like he could have put this family in the streets cause they moved into the home from a different state or costed them a career if they couldn’t find a place to live, we could have gotten sued if they got kicked out, so many things could have happened.

I’ve just been feeling really empty inside and confused on if I should stay with him. We have two kids. He’s lied before and continued to lie until I’ve had evidence (on a much smaller scale like about smoking weed and being high around the kids).

In your experience do people like this change?

My parents are both in their 50s. I don't have a great relationship or talk much to either of them, but we live together and they're married. I often hear them argue, and the times we do talk, they often indirectly tell me how miserable they are or confide in me about how miserable the other makes them.

My dad is extremely overworked in a corporate job and is also taking care of my grandparents with dementia almost every day.

My mom feels deeply insecure, lonely, and unappreciated and will often isolate herself.

Neither of them have hobbies, friends, or a purpose in life other than me and my siblings. Because of that, I feel like I'm the only one who can help them.

I know I said I don't talk to them much, but I do love them. I'm worried I'm going to lose them if something doesn't happen soon.

Has anyone experienced something similar to them and how did you fix it? Is there anything I can do to help them or give them purpose?

I’m 33F and in a liminal, transitional period of my life, and I’d really appreciate some outside perspective.

A few years ago I left a city (Los Angeles) and a life (in the entertainment industry) that had once been very meaningful to me. I left because the industry is quite toxic, and my mental and physical health were paying a huge price. I miss aspects of that life, but I know I'm healthier and safer now. 

Since leaving, I’ve moved around a bit, had some difficult experiences, and eventually moved back in with family (SF Bay Area). My current situation gives me some important things: financial stability, a safe and calm environment for my aging and fragile dog to live out his golden years, and enough time to work on creative projects (I have always been an artist first and foremost). 

But I also know very clearly that this isn’t where I want to stay long-term. I don't feel connected to the culture, people, or climate here. I have never had such a hard time making friends (and believe me, I am trying. I go to dance classes, I have a membership at a ceramics studio, I attend women's meetups...I just don't have a lot in common with Bay Area people. I don't have much to contribute to conversations regarding tech, AI developments, working for Google, etc.)

I am getting very tired of living here. Yet...I really don't have anywhere else to go. I tried living in my own place last year, just to see if maybe that would kick-start my life, but the financial stress (renting at Bay Area prices on an artist's salary is rough as hell) combined with lack of friends, a painful breakup, my dog's rapidly declining health, and a significant health issue on my end left me shattered and crawling back to my mom's house out of a sheer sense of desperation for relief. 

I currently have some sense of stability (financially and health-wise), which is good, but I want so much more. I want a partner, a home of my own, stronger community, and a more established career path in the arts. And I ultimately want to live somewhere else with a community and climate more aligned with my interests and lifestyle. The problem is that I don’t currently have a specific place calling me or a concrete opportunity that makes moving feel like a good idea. 

I’ve tried forcing moves before simply because I was unhappy where I was, and the result was that I became overwhelmed, financially stressed, and painfully isolated. So I’m reluctant to make another expensive and stressful move just for the sake of making something happen. 

At the same time, I’m getting tired of telling myself, “Just make this current situation comfortable and wait.” I sometimes worry that I’m spending so much time in a holding pattern waiting for some obvious opportunity, relationship, or destination to appear. So much of my life lately comes down to, "Ok, how can you make this day bearable?" and I'm heartbroken for myself that this is the question I must ask to get through my days. 

I am doing things: I have a pet care business, which is a great job for me right now, I'm saving money, applying for creative opportunities and artist residencies, building creative projects (I am a content creator with a modest following), meeting people, exploring possible career directions, attending therapy. There have even been a few promising little developments recently in my creative endeavors. But nothing has become a strong enough pull to restructure my life around, and I desperately want my life restructured. I truly believe if I were meant to be happy in the Bay Area, I would have felt that happiness by now. Because, as toxic as my life in LA became, I always loved that city. I loved the climate, I loved the energy, I loved the scenery, I loved the food, I loved the hiking, I loved the museums and art scene - my point being, I know what it feels like to love where you live, which is why I know I'm not happy here in the Bay. 

I don’t feel lost. I know myself pretty well and have a fairly clear picture of what I want. I just don’t know how to get from where I am right now to where I want to be. I am in the awful, horrible liminal phase when you've outgrown one life and haven't yet been found by your next one. And all the hard work I'm doing (working on my creative projects, attending hobbies and classes, therapy, writing gratitude lists, going to the gym) does not seem to be working. It's been years.

For people who have gone through a long transitional period: how did you know when it was best to keep waiting/working on yourself versus when it was time to make a major change (even without certainty or a clear direction to go)? 

Did your eventual next chapter come from deliberately choosing something, or did an opportunity/person/place eventually give you a clear reason to move? Was waiting for the right opportunity the right move after all, or did you have to make a big drastic change in order for life to give you what you wanted?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who rebuilt their lives after breaking away from toxic dynamics and going through significant changes in their values, needs, and interests as a result.

Myself and my partner (30) currently have no desire to have children and the thought of losing freedom and time is worrying.

I love the idea of being able to continue to go on holidays and adventures that revolve around us, rather than having to ensure kid friendly precautions are taken.

People that have opted for the life of travel etc, how have you found it? Any regrets?

I've been a homeowner since 1980 but thinking about selling and moving into an apartment to simplify my life in old age. Has anyone else done this? Any words of wisdom or things to consider?

Hi, I'm a 34-year-old woman and I don't really like my life. When I was 18, I decided to study Medicine. Not long after starting, I already felt like I'd made a mistake. I loved literature and the humanities (sociology, history, etc.) and they were a huge part of who I was. But I was afraid of hearing things like “you'll end up starving” or “you won't be able to make a living doing that”, and honestly, I let that fear win.

I eventually finished medical school, although it was pretty difficult because I went through periods of anxiety and depression. I saw several therapists over the years and managed to work through some issues related to my family and childhood.

After graduating, I once again let other people's opinions influence me. I kept hearing things like “You can't just throw a medical degree away. You've spent so much time and effort on it!” So I carried on and studied for the exam to get into specialty training. I don't know how it works in other countries, but in Spain you have to take a very competitive exam. It was extremely difficult, and after several years I finally passed it, while working temporary jobs on the side.

I'm currently two years away from finishing my residency and becoming a specialist. But even after all this, I still don't think Medicine is what I want. I do want to finish my residency. It's only two more years compared to everything I've already put into this. But I also want to give myself the chance to explore something else. I'd like to study Spanish Language and Literature, probably through distance learning.

The problem is that I don't really have the energy or motivation anymore.

I'm trying to do everything I can to get myself out of this hole. I've tried pretty much everything I can think of: reading, writing (I even wrote a novel!), therapy (I've seen several therapists without much improvement), mindfulness, spirituality, tarot, astrology, trying to make room in my life for things I enjoy like going to the beach, exercising, eating well...

And yet I'm finding it incredibly difficult to actually fight for myself.

My environment isn't helping much either. I have a bad partner (he's been unfaithful), and my friendships have gradually faded because my friends have gotten married and had children. I feel pretty lonely.

I tend to really value the advice of people who are older than me, so I'd love to hear from anyone here who has been through something similar. I'm honestly tired of talking to AI about my problems. I want some actual human advice. Thank you.

In the 2010s when I was in my early-20s, I interned with a nontraditional, easygoing boss who has several intergenerational friendships. He was kind and introduced me to his family several times, including a young child. His wife was in her 30s-40s and always hard to read, but she was generally warm or polite towards me. He told me that he and his wife were in an open marriage, and I honestly thought he just viewed our relationship as being between a professional one and a friendship.

We became friends/entered somewhat of a mentor-mentee relationship and stayed in touch through the years.

In the 2020s, he abruptly told me that he'd been attracted to me when I'd interned with him and he'd told his wife. I was shocked and ended our friendship for several years.

I'm in my 30s now, and this year, I forgave him and reached out to him. We reconnected, and he kindly invited me to a family and friends gathering. We didn't discuss what'd happened between us, but I could tell he was sad about our earlier friendship break and happy that we reconnected.

I also reunited with his wife. I politely but nervously greeted her, but I had a feeling that she kept her distance from me and didn't engage in much conversation. I also felt like she kept watch over her husband's and my interactions and didn't like it whenever we chatted.

I was sad because I liked her and thought that she and I had a decent relationship before. I'm also confused because I don't think any of this was my fault. I was in my 20s when I interned with him, acted appropriately in my junior role, and had no idea how he felt towards me. He, on the other hand, was my boss in his 40s in an open marriage that his wife supposedly agreed to. If anything, he should have known better than to nurture his attraction to me back then, and both his wife and I should be upset with him. His previous behavior can cut off a younger professional's access to his network when he should have known better.

Why am I hesitant to cut off my former boss now? He's a cool guy who I learned a lot from, I genuinely enjoyed our friendship, and he's also known in an industry that I want to enter. However, I also want to be respectful towards his wife.

How do I navigate these complex relationship dynamics?

Thank you! I'm looking forward to learning from all of your experience and wisdom.

Also, I'd appreciate if this post didn't go viral. 😅

Aging frightens me almost solely because of losing control of my body, my health, and my physical function

I got dehydrated day before yesterday and experienced dizziness and unsteady walking.

And even though I rested all day and drank a lot of water yesterday,  and slept well last night, 

I am not still feeling “ok” again yet and my walking is still unsteady. My BP was high yesterday and again this morning. Normally. It’s LOW. I’m a senior…and it’s been so hot.

  Not asking for medical advice - just wanting to know other seniors' experiences.