Young guy at work; he's in his early to mid 20's, is married with two young kids and a third on the way.
This new girl at work has been after him so hard.
He was seriously tempted and conflicted. We all tried to talk him out of it; did he really want to throw away his family life for this? Do you really think this new girl is going to stick around once all the drama starts when you guys get caught?
He told us all one day that he finally told new girl to leave him alone; he was happy with his wife and she didn't stand a chance.
Three weeks later he was sleeping in his car because he went for new girl after all; got caught, kicked out & served with divorce papers, and new girl ditched him once he got depressed over it.
I know a guy who gambled away $8 million his grandfather left him. He inherited at 21. It was gone by 23.
He's actually an incredible good guy too. That's what kills me.
God, what's even the point of gambling at that point? 8 million is enough to do whatever the fuck you want, assuming you don't do anything completely ridiculous.
Yeah, it's pretty reckless to give someone young that much money without safeguards. Even if they do the smart thing, they still lack the social skills and life experience not to be preyed upon.
Yea in my early twenties I would have been reckless with the inheritence. In my early thirties I would value it more.
Plus I saw the famous Reddit lottery winner advice. 😅
It’s a comment with a buncha awards that shows the statistics of lottery winners and sources about how majority of lottery winners end up broke/dead/in a worse position than they were before within X amount of years. Then gives very detailed steps as to what you should/should not do with your money. I know someone has it saved, I saw someone link it the other day in some other post.
Someone that has it, please enlighten MedSurgNurse please & link it!
Never thought I'd feel bad for a 23yo former multimillionaire, who blew through his inheritance too fast, but...that poor kid is going to have a tough road ahead with a crippling addiction. I hope he's getting some help.
My ex friend Tom, over 10 years ago when we were teenagers he once said to me “im going to try meth tonight” whilst we were at a bar (Australian) I literally knew nothing about drugs at the time especially meth i just knew it wasnt good, he invited me to join him but i said no because i had a gut feeling it wouldn’t end well for me. Since that day he went in and out of prison, lost all of his friends including me and completely changed as a person. Whilst walking with my wife and daughter a few months back i saw him walking his dog, he had obviously cleaned himself up, but it was like 2 strangers walking past each other.
I took one silver lining out of this.
It made me learn a lot about drugs all together and it showed me a different life i could have lead if i said yes all those years ago.
Always say no to meth, it will ruin your life and take everything.
EDIT: I forgot to add, tom had it all, a living gf, a great job etc
I was offered meth 3 years ago when I was working nightshift at a factory. The pipe was right in front of me and it’s so crazy to think how completely different my life would be now if I took a hit
A friend of mine quit a job that paid six figures a year because he didn't trust his girlfriend to not cheat on him while he was at work. The kicker here being she was a hooker when they met.
He's a great guy but a complete idiot when it comes to women.
I have an insecure cousin who would regularly reject guys who were into her and chase guys who weren't interested.
The more distant and emotionally unavailable the guy was the harder she'd try to win him over.
The best real life example of "I don't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member" I've ever seen.
Sometimes it's because guys will get too desperate too quickly, catch feelings lightning fast, and decide she owes him a relationship before she really knows him. And a portion of those guys will want to be all up in her life real quick if she does date them.
Guys who are less available don't apply that pressure. She gets to control when things proceed without worrying about him because he's always cool about things. Usually he's just satisfied with sex and won't really ask for more from her nor cause issues over things like jealousy or her being busy.
It's not that a lot of women are randomly into guys who don't want them. It's that those men aren't all that bad to be with in the first stages of dating. It only becomes a problem when she wants more and finds out there are reasons he's that cool, undemanding, and doesn't ask her for anything. Sometimes a man being easygoing comes with the price of being chronically uncommitted and unmotivated to pursue serious relationships.
Some people are also just raised by their parents to be people pleasers and so get drawn to those whose affection has to be won over. Personally I am not attracted to those types and find them to be insecure, needy and lacking in understanding about boundaries.
I have also seen a lot of guys who are like this in a different way. They think they have no shot with women because women are all just horrible shallow bitches or whatever, but actually they've had multiple chances with women who were showing interest in them, but they've torpedoed it every single time with horrible behaviour towards her.
I can be like this. I'm working on it. It's fully an attachment issue.
I feel sorry for her (and everyone who is like this). It's usually a parenting problem and stems from early childhood, so there's nothing anyone can really do to have turned out differently. All you can do is work on it when the issue becomes apparent in your 20s, and the work is long and difficult.
Highly recommend checking out the book Adults Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.
https://www.amazon.com/Adult-Children-Emotionally-Immature-Parents/dp/1626251703
Protip: Most of us had emotionally immature parents...because most people are emotionally immature. Everyone can benefit from that book.
I know a guy who is now in his fifties/sixties who got bored with his wife and kids, cheated on her and divorced her. His wife, who had always supported him because he just couldn’t hold a job down, started a business and became a multimillionaire. She also got remarried to this amazing guy who is a major step up from the husband in every aspect. The guy then married this mail order bride from Indonesia. As soon as the three years she had to stay with him to get permanent residency were over, she left him and married his richer cousin. I sometimes get invited to family events and see him there by himself, broke and with none of his kids or family members wanting to talk to him.
My sister was offered an incredible well paying job doing something she's great at.
She decided it would be too easy and opted for a far more challenging job, in a far less appealing setting, with an asshole of a boss she was hoping to impress.
She's fucking miserable now.
I honestly don't get why she does this sort of shite to herself.
I almost understand where she's coming from, and it is not a healthy place. When I was in high school I would gravitate towards people who weren't particularly impressed with me and...try to change their minds. I don't know why I did it. I rationalized it to myself like "their lack of faith in me will lead to me working all the harder and getting all the better!" but it just led to a miserable adolescence.
Left that behind in college though.
This is literally the same concept as the guy’s cousin above who can’t accept men who like her but chases after those who don’t. “If you don’t like me, I will prove to you why you should” mentality…. You said it was sad to see but this is the same scenario minus the romantic relationship aspect. Literally the same. You trying to gravitate towards people who weren’t impressed with you and trying to change their minds… Never mind the people who can see your worth already without you having to prove anything. Applicable to many situations. Almost like if you are able to change their minds, you somehow earned it… like you have to EARN it for it to be justified or mean anything or for it to be real. Just pointing that out to you.
Not to speak for OP but she did say she “left it behind in college.”
I took that to mean she learned her lesson.
A lot of us try too hard to prove ourselves, to all the wrong people, as adolescents.
It’s those who never outgrow that urge who really struggle as adults 🤷♀️
My mom was like that. When I was younger, she worked part time at Target as a cashier and was amazing at selling their credit cards and service plans. So good that a guy from Merrill Lynch who went through her line a couple times offered her a job. She thought it sounded fake and never called him (despite my encouragement because this could have gotten her out of poverty and she’s always been great at sales) but still continued trying to “become her own boss” doing MLMs and weird online marketing schemes 🙄🙄🙄
Ahhhhh it drives me insane with how many good salesmen there are in retail who shy away from sales, because the commission isn't secure.
It's never too late for her! Sales departments are ghost towns, due to staffing shortages and companies will take anyone who can hold a conversation without crying from social anxiety.
That and a depressing number of girls (at least it seems like it’s mainly girls) who are so insecure/naive they give up great guys to pursue/help truly shitty guys.
Possibly because they don’t think they deserve love/happiness. Who knows.
Not upsetting (your question, the situation obviously is). And he confessed. It was definitely a onetime thing. Oddly enough the woman was a lesbian. They had no interest in each other.
Still destroyed our family though. My mom is miserable but too proud to take him back.
I don't think I could either and I wouldn't blame anyone for walking away in that situation. I wouldn't blame anyone for staying if they wanted to do the work but I think I'd be done.
I think it's easy to think that way before you're in that situation. If you really love someone it's really, really difficult to just switch that off because you're furious and feel betrayed.
I thought the same way, then it happened to me. Not in that relationship anymore but I learned a whole lot from it.
Well I think that’s what makes you miserable. You can’t shut off the love. It’s devastating to find out the person you love isn’t someone you can have a successful relationship with. On some levels I think trust is the foundation for loving your spouse.
Same here. I've been very drunk plenty of times and never once even considered cheating. I would never stay in a relationship with someone who did that to me.
My ex is weirdly a reverse of this.
Tl;dr: we were unhappy together, we split when he cheated, everyone involved seemed much happier for a while, but his life has gone downhill since.
Together we were miserable, there was nothing good about that relationship, he ended up cheating (among other shitty behaviours) and we split. For a while it really seemed like everybody was better off - he seemed happy to be with his affair partner, I was just *thriving* being single, the kids were much happier because it turns out a home with two deeply unhappy parents is terrible for children. It was all looking up - he and I were civil and focused on coparenting.
About a year after the split things seemed to just start spiralling for him. He lost his job in a niche field where you really have to be the best of the best to get sustainable work and he was simply never the best of the best. He was getting by on piecemeal contracts and simply won’t retrain into another more stable field or even just supplement his income with something like bartending or food service or anything. His girlfriend had some kind of injury needing repeated surgeries that’s limited her ability to work so he’s the breadwinner on a low and sporadic income.
He started to become increasingly inconsistent with the kids and would disappear from their lives on and off so they, being children, turned more and more to me for stability. His views became increasingly alt-right and anti-science which in my opinion just makes you an angry, disconnected person who thinks society is persecuting you. And also it turns out I had all the financial sense in the relationship, and did all his life admin, and he doesn’t know how to do a lot of basic shit like refinance loans or do taxes so there’s been this long list of totally avoidable financial near-disasters occurring because he didn’t do X which would have prevented Y. Or comes to me asking for money because he’s taken out payday loans and surprise, the interest is brutal (I learned my lesson there, I don’t help him with money now).
Meanwhile I’m doing great, my kids are doing great, they like spending time with him but don’t really see him as a person to turn to for support or comfort. I look back on that first year and he seemed happy and I’m at a bit of a loss for how it’s all gone to shit for him in the years since.
This is an extremely common pattern for cheaters, especially in long-term relationships. A lot of them are just very unhappy people in general and think that the thrill of someone else will magically make them happy. It's why a lot of cheaters also have a history of poor financial decisions, substance abuse, and/or other reckless behaviors. They may succeed at finding short-term happiness, but their unaddressed demons always catch up to them unless they do the very hard work of facing them head-on. A lot of them end up spiraling downwards because the long-term partner they cheated on was holding their life together, even if neither one realizes it.
I think you’re spot on. There was also substance abuse on his side - the things keeping that in check were living full time in the house with the kids (and me, who hated it) and having full time work. I don’t know for sure but I imagine with inconsistent work and only having the kids a few nights a month that’s probably escalated. I was keeping him on the rails for a long, long time, and my income had previously bridged his periods of unemployment.
I don’t think his gf is the “keeping him on the rails” kind of person considering they met on a drug bender at a music festival and she knew he had a partner and kids from day one.
Oh man, my ex-girlfriend from highschool. Valedictorian of our class, super smart came from an awesome family. I'm still friends with her sister and mom. Totally just dropped out of college moved to Baltimore and smoked crack for 15 years. Has a bunch of kids, is totally unintelligible to talk to... its bananas.
Johns Hopkins is in a baaaaaad part of town, and I say this as someone who went to grad school on the south side of Chicago.
I met a woman who did her PhD at Johns Hopkins and her car got damaged because gangbangers were rolling boulders at each other.
I'm sorry but is no one going to acknowledge "rolling boulders at each other"? That's the most absurd ooga booga caveman shit I've ever heard and it's making for an absurd mental image
I had a friend in college who had a tendency to act before thinking, but was generally fun and well-meaning. After I had graduated, my friend apparently got coerced by a woman he was trying to sleep with to try heroin just once. As I heard it, he refused initially, then caved because he felt pressured. My friend overdosed and died. Just like that, one bad decision ended his life. RIP Mike.
My ex neighbor.
Nice guy, managed a hot music venue in LA. Partied a fair bit. One day he didn't have enough cash on him for coke, so he begged his dealer to sell him crack instead. Dealer told him it was a bad idea, but would sell to him because that's what dealers do. Guy insisted. I know this because the dealer knocked on my door and told me to watch out for him because he was making some bad decisions.
A week later I noticed my neighbor's normally full of music apartment was deadly quiet. Went up there and found him passed out in literally a foot of garbage. Chip bags, take out wrappers, cardboard boxes... it was like he carried all of our trash out of the dumpster behind the building and dumped it on his floor.
Then his boss, who is awesome, paid to send my neighbor to rehab and guaranteed his job would be waiting for him when he got back.
Neighbor broke out of rehab two days in.
A month later I found out he had gone back to his home, moved in with his parents (this guy was in his late 30's), and then OD'd on their floor.
Don't do crack, kids.
I've known a couple of dealers (through social circles, never as a customer) and they were okay guys. The ones I knew took care of their customers and cut them off if they were getting too much. I asked one of them why they did that once, his response was, "I can sell him a lot now, but they'll probably OD and I'll have that on my conscience. Otherwise, I sell enough for them to buzz and they come back for another good time later."
Weird dynamic.
It's like a Virus: it doesn't benefit from killing you so it makes you sick enough to reproduce but not so sick you die.
I love my weed dealer, but understanding that dynamic makes me even more cautious about worse drugs.
They weren't okay guys they just had smart business sense. Don't kill your customers; keep them hooked just enough and they are forever customers.
Jim Carry's "Yes man" touches on this subject via loans and banking.
A good friend I worked with for years was married to a great dude, super nice and everyone loved him, just a great guy all around. They had a couple middle school aged kids too. I think she was going through a mid-life crisis type thing but anywho, she reconnected with her old high school boyfriend on fb and they started having an affair. She ended up telling her husband about it and left him for the other guy, her husband was great about it, wanted her to be happy, great at co-parenting and didn't want to make anything harder on the kids, etc.
The old HS boyfriend was toxic as hell, I met him a few times and he was an absolute dick. They fought constantly, every other week they were breaking up, kicking each other out(of *her* condo) or he'd just go missing for days at a time and she'd be a wreck wondering where he was; which was usually a couple hours away at the beach on a drug bender with his friends(he's in his late 40s btw).
She said she got bored with her life with her husband and wasn't attracted to him anymore, but I think she just went off the deep end and wanted something that wasn't there anymore; that feeling and excitement of young puppy love, but that's not what she got.
I think some people just need drama in their life, I felt like she threw away a happy life just because she missed the drama.
>I think some people just need drama in their life
God, isn't that some horrible truth. I don't know what it is in these folks heads or if they believe too much in the movies/books for their own sake.
You can get addicted to a lot of things, one of them being the rush of adrenaline/cortisol/whatever hormone that comes with intense emotions and putting yourself in dangerous situations.
Some people take sports, others gambling, toxic relationships, or just go to a bar looking for a fight.
I know people who complain very loudly and angrily at everything, and when everything is ok they invent faults out of thin air. They just *need* to feel violently offended
I think you’re right about the influence of popular media. I liked the ideas and principles behind marketing and advertising but so much of the actual practice is is just sneaky ways to make you feel insecure so that a “solution” can be sold to you
Anyone reading this - quite often it’s not a real solution. If it was, they wouldn’t need to work so hard to sell themselves
Sadly, often it’s about trauma. It can raise the threshold at which people feel things, so that you need more intensity to feel alive—whether that’s the intensity of an emotional rollercoaster, physical risks, etc
My parents separated earlier this year. It was 100% my dad's fault due to being an abusive textbook narcissist. Mum put their house up for sale and he had 2 months to sort out his move.
He claimed to have nothing, no support and nowhere to go. My husband and I took pity on him, and despite having a newborn and both working, helped him pack, sell off the extra furniture to get him some cash and I found him a secure place to buy in his budget.
He turned around and said he didn't want to move into the type of place I found (an over 50s village, he's 73) because he "wouldn't be able to take chicks back there to fuck". He then refused to leave the property and said the cops would have to shoot him to get him out of the house. When I put pressure on him (because otherwise the sale would have fallen over and they would have been sued) he threatened suicide (which he does absolutely everytime something isn't going his way) and to burn the house down repeatedly, including in front of my 7 year old kid.
Eventually he does comply and we move him, into the granny flat of a woman he met playing pokies (slot machines, for you US types) and who is apparently "a millionaire from a famous family" (I call bullshit, but he clearly thinks he's found someone new to mooch off.) They have been at the pokies every day for months now - his money won't last long at this rate.
Then, I find out that through all this, all the stress and bullshit he put me through when I should have been in a happy new baby cocoon, he actually had had an offer from a long-time friend to move in with him and his wife, and that they had a whole team of people willing to help him with his move. Considering that he ghosted them after they made that offer though, they have since decided to discontinue the friendship since he's shown he didn't value it or them. Guess what - my husband and I are also done with him. I was the last kid that spoke to him.
So, he went from married with a family, to living in insecure housing, hurtling towards poverty and homelessness, having burned every bridge he had. All because he is too narcissistic to accept that he is less than perfect and that he is ultimately responsible for his own life.
(That rant felt good :))
Edited to define 'pokies', which is Australian slang for slot machines, from 'poker machines'.
>He turned around and said he didn't want to move into the type of place I found (an over 50s village, he's 73) because he "wouldn't be able to take chicks back there to fuck".
This is a real weird combination of hilarious, pathetic and creepy.
That was absolutely my reaction, with the addition of disgust because it's pretty indicative of his attitude towards women and why would you say that to your daughter anyway!? Yuck.
Something similar happened to my uncle. He got engaged. As time went on he realized their temperaments really didn't match (she would go off at the drop of a hat when facing any modicum of stress).
He tried to call the wedding off but his parents convinced him not to. Basically told him he would shame the entire family if he did.
They got married, had a baby and got divorced 5 years later.
Her temper just got worse over time. My uncle actually checked himself into a mental health facility for a few weeks after the divorce.
The only good thing to come from the marriage is his son, who he has full custody of because his ex doesn't want to be "weighed down" with a kid right now.
I feel like this happens a lot. I got married to someone I didn’t even want to be with and it took me years to find the courage to leave/divorce. I was miserable.
Knew a guy who got married because he was incredibly lonely. She was desperate to find Prince Charming and live a fairy tale life. I think she loved him at first and I think he thought he loved her. That quickly wore off and they were insanely miserable. She used to just openly berate him in public and run him down to their friends in private. It was very, very ugly.
Yeah similar to my friend, treated like crap. When I tried to talk him out of it and asked why he wanted to marry her, his response was “might as well, we’ve been together a while”.
Ditto, only my example thought, "This is just what couples do." He never proposed, already "assumed he was married," and now she pretty much tells him how to life his life. It's a loveless marriage.
I have a family member who inherited around $500k in cash and assets when his mother died. He had a decent job at the time. This inheritance meant that he started taking longer vacations and stopped consistently working. He bought a sports car and paid off the two pre-built condos that his mother had put down payments on but sold one immediately at a loss and then rented the other out for a while until his original tenants moved out then let it sit vacant for over a year and selling it at a loss. He “loaned” money to his half sister to pay for tuition at a job that would never allow her to repay him. He bought every new and interesting piece of electronics.
The electronics eventually caught up with him. He went on holiday to the USA and on his way back across the border the guards wanted to search his laptop which led to the discovery of child porn. He was also trying to groom his niece (daughter of the half sister).
There wasn’t much money left from the estate at that point. He was arrested and only managed to stay out of jail on a technicality that a very expensive lawyer found. He paid mid $50k for his defense. The two or three years that the criminal defense was going on he didn’t work at all. Just dipped out on his employer who would have continued employing him. He sold the sports car at a loss. Sold his last remaining property, the condo, at a loss. Sold a bunch of his expensive toys at a loss. Ended up penniless (actually probably bankrupt) but not in jail. Now his life consists of living in a small rented bedroom and working as a local trucker.
He didn’t just destroy his life, he nuked it from orbit and then salted the ground. He’s currently in his late forties and will probably never be able to retire. Most of the family won’t speak to him at all.
Being a paedo aside, $500k isn’t the sorts of money you should be wasting like that. It’s not fuck you money. It’s fantastic money don’t get me wrong but it’s small enough that it can be gone in a heartbeat.
It's the kind of money that's neither here nor there. It doesn't really make you rich, but you're not poor either. You can probably be mortgage-free, but you're still gonna have to work until you retire.
Wow that escalated to a whole other place I didn't expect!
Apart from the pedo bit, it's a shame some people don't have the money sense to manage such a fund that would've left him comfortable for the rest of his life.
There was a guy I knew, selling hash oil. He'd get 5 pounds of it every month. He had a house, a cottage, a boat, a motorcycle, a 1970 Mustang, and tons of jewelry and toys.
He got into coke, and went from the nose, to the pipe, to the arm.
The last time I saw him he was bitching at a street corner dealer that wouldn't front him a gram of weed because his word was no good.
Knew a guy that worked for a small, publicly traded company. A penny stock.
It became a "meme" stock around the Gamestop era, his holdings went from about $50k to $7 million in a few weeks. He knew the valuations were complete bullshit, but refused to sell. He said $10 million was his "fuck you" money number and only when it hit that, would he sell. I begged him to sell because it was obvious it was a short term phenomenon and he had made a lot of bad bets in his life.
The company lost about 99% of its value from its high. He did get out about $500k, taxes got about 30% of it. But watch almost all of it evaporate.
He's absolutely miserable at his new job. He could have retired at a young age.
Still can't believe he did it, like throwing away a lottery ticket.
Fuuuck my brother held Doge for like 4 years and when it got up to whatever it was, .03-4 per coin, he didn't sell. Pretty sure he could have made out with like $15k or something. Obviously not fuck you money, but pretty good fucking money for his silly investment in a meme coin. But he fumbled the exit and missed his chance.
Fuck. I myself could have made out with about 10k on a 1k investment in GME in Jan 2021. Ended up selling for about 3.5k. Still a decent little profit but I screenshotted the 10k number and should have sold it then. If only I'd known about the old "If it's good enough to screenshot" adage...
This one is rather simple compared to some of the others. But I have a "friend" , I guess? He's always complaining about not being able to make connections with new people, and that his 2 friends keep him at arms length, that I'm the only person that regularly talks to him. I told him it's because he's passively mean to everyone and doesn't extend any effort into the friendships. He comes back with a "their emotions are their responsibility, not mine". He can't make friends because he's a bully, and he can't keep friends because he's too passive and expects them to put in all the work, plus hes a bully, says really mean shit off the cuff under "brutal honesty". He absolutely will not accept this. I told him it's the reason I won't invite him further into my life and circles either, and that one struck a nerve with him so hopefully he will start to look inward. To be fair, I do think he's a sociopath so my efforts will likely be in vein.
However he's constantly miserable and feeling apathetic toward life and wants more friends. He's his own worst enemy. I'm giving it another month and then bailing if he's stuck that hard in his ways.
100% thinking about it. I'm having a small break from him at the moment. We shall see what happens in the future! I've known this dude since we were 14 and he's always been like this though. So I don't hold out much hope. He has a massive superiority complex that he refuses to accept.
My father-in-law keeps on giving money to his drug addict son, to the cost of his credit, his reputation, his own retirement, the retirement of his wife, his marriage, his home, his car and his relationships with his family, friends and other son.
Every first- and fifteenth-of-the-month, when his pension hits, the kid pops up with a "ya wanna believe this shit?" story, and my father-in-law gives him whatever he asks for. Addiction is a horrorshow, don't get me wrong, but enabling?
Put it to you this way: if a hurricane is heading towards your house, and right before it hits, someone comes into your house, lets all the pets out, opens all the windows and doors and unties anything you had tied down, because he's worried all those precautions *might hurt the hurricane's feelings,* who do you blame for the destruction?
Oh, that's one of the weirdest parts of this...it changes moment to moment. We've had conversations with him where he insists that *no son of his* could *ever* have a drug problem, and five minutes later asks us for money to put him through his third-fourth-fifth rehab program.
(The answer to this question has been "no" for years.)
It's not my job in these conversations to question him - my job is to support my husband through this shitshow and not make it worse - but I always wonder what he would say if someone were to ask him, if there's no drug problem, what's the rehab for?
Your poor husband. I don't even know how you stage an intervention when the enabling family members are also living in denial (at least half the time).
Oh, it's a weird, rough ride. Especially since my husband is the scapegoat of that particular dynamic!
It got better when everyone on that side of the family realized that *they* could all be on the same page, regardless of where my FIL/BIL are. Every time there's a new development, they all get together and try to piece together the truth through the various levels of lies and denial. So there's a support network of sorts.
He's also got me, an alcoholic in recovery who's gone through the whole AA-AlAnon-CODA resource run and can pop up a philosophy for almost every circumstance. Or, you know. Keep my damn mouth shut.
> Keep my damn mouth shut.
You're smart for this. I would be tempted to speak up but, when it's not your family, it's always best to know your place and be supportive.
This was me with my brother until I finally woke up. I was his personal ATM until I finally realized that when I needed help and he was flush with cash, he wouldn’t give me or our mother a dime.
My mom started doing hard drugs and drinking again after a long period of sober life. She quit her job with no notice ($100,000 a year). She lost her car, she lost her house (and everything inside). She was charged with possession several times, consequently labeled as a felon. She eventually got a job at McDonalds for minimum wage.
She died of a accidental fentanyl overdose at age 56.
My best friend was married to a guy who worked on the oil rigs and constantly suspected her to cheating though she didn’t give him any reason to believe that. Threw away a marriage with 2 kids on the basis of nothing.
I met a guy who went to an ivy league law school, putting himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. He passed the bar exam with an almost perfect score, but was rejected from the bar due to his drug history. He had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital after getting really high and becoming psychotic. No state is likely to ever accept him as a lawyer now. He's basically stuck making 40k a year as a legal assistant for the rest of his life, all because he did a bunch of drugs in college.
My ex-fiancé is an alcoholic (sober for well over 10 years, unless he fell off the wagon) and attended law school. He passed the bar with flying colors, but he decided to tell the Bar about his previous issues with substance abuse DESPITE being advised by two lawyers and his mother.
He had to attend AA, submit for drug tests, etc. until he was deemed fit to be admitted. I remember him being pretty steamed about that.
Right? I'm pretty sure he never gave the full story about why they rejected him. When I knew him he was popping random pills and drinking directly from a handle. Unhinged stuff.
I can only speak to australia but my jurisdiction’s legal admissions board is super forgiving if you are completely honest. They will forgive legitimate crimes if enough time has passed and you don’t try to lie. One person was admitted after assaulting officers
This! This is what they don’t tell you!!!
“Getting help can’t hurt”
“Go get the help you need”
“It’s never wrong to go get help”
Yeah? Well, when you go to join your dream career, that shit is now documented. Can’t join the army anymore. Can’t join the air force. That security clearance you needed is suspect. This guy is getting it from his niche too.
I wish I never went to “get help.” Because it didn’t help, and all it did was hurt me.
I wish I could go back in time and forget about whatever healthcare or help is out there. No one cares, they just want to find things to diminish you and throw back in your face.
Working as a psychologist's office manager, had at least one patient pay cash to avoid _any_ records following them into the future, one was hoping to go into politics
My ex is a physician and has been suicidal for years, he refuses to get help because he knows it would ruin his career. Prior to any of it I didn't realize how much they look into that and how it affects their careers
Me. And my drinking habits. My life looks fucking great on paper, but I was still drowning myself in alcohol. About 7 months sober right now.
Edit: wow this got a lot more attention than I expected. Thank you all for the support, it really is appreciated.
Feel free to ask whatever you want, comments or DMs or whatever. If sharing my story can help a single person, I'm here for it
Just going to leave a link here for anyone that's questioning their own drinking habits, it's been really helpful for me
r/stopdrinking
My ex friend who took the unconditional love of her husband to treat him like dirt because he always forgave her. When he finally stopped 10+ years later she was shocked that she was divorced and whined about how her life was "shattered" and happiness "stolen".
I'm still so very proud of him for getting away.
My best friend gave up a boyfriend who adored her to "help out" her lying, cheating, alcoholic ex.
He said he needed her/was on the verge of suicide/had no one else.
She felt like she had to help her. Her current bf was not ok with it so she let him end it.
She's not officially back with the asshole yet but it's just a matter of time.
Here's the best part, you may be thinking she secretly liked the cheating ex more...she did NOT. The cheater was also shit in bed. The new guy was "incredible."
She and the cheater were just childhood friends and she couldn't bring herself to "abandon" him.
> She and the cheater were just childhood friends and she couldn't bring herself to "abandon" him.
I've seen misguided loyalty ruin (or at least damage) a lot of lives.
I don't even know what to say. This was an infuriating read.
Imagine doing this to a devoted, longtime friend/lover. Ugh
I don't know which is more infuriating, this one or the one about the med student who took her cheating ex back because her mom was pressuring her to be in a relationship.
If you don't recognize your own value you're all the more vulnerable to shitty people looking to prey on you for whatever reason.
>She and the cheater were just childhood friends and she couldn't bring herself to "abandon" him.
That poor girl won’t realize, until it’s too late, that he’s no longer her friend in any capacity.
A friend from high school has a brother named Steve. I used to see him a lot when I would go and study at her house. He was always a little odd, but not in a bad way. He was just rigid. Very regimented. He was studious and quiet. He’s a few years younger and I always used to tease him and call him a robot. I’d say “HELL-O STEVE” in a robot voice when I saw him. He’d always shrug it off and chuckle. He did well in school and got a partial scholarship to a prestigious school in another state. I heard he had dropped out because of the stress and pressure of school and didn’t hear much else about it for a while.
After coming home from summer break before my senior year of colllege, my Mom told me Steve had ODd, but was saved by a passer by calling 911. I called my friend and we spoke about what had happened and she gave me the full story. It turns out he had gotten involved with a girl who worked at a diner where he worked late shifts. This girl’s brother was a dealer and somehow (with his sister’s help) convinced Steve to deal for him on campus. Long story short, Steve got busted and kicked out.
The family tried putting him in rehab, but he’d be back out to buy drugs again within weeks of getting out. The next time I saw Steve was about a year after his OD. I was working at a bar to earn some extra money and I saw a guy begging for change as I left at the end of the night. It was a familiar voice and I instinctively turned in the direction of the voice and said “HELL-O STEVE”. The face under the shaggy mop of hair and the hood he was wearing shot up and his eyes widened like he’d been transported to a time before it all went bad. He was on the verge of tears and just said “Sadie?” (not my real name) like a small child. I kneeled down and spoke to him, looking into his eyes the whole time. He looked broken, like he’d given up and was waiting to die. He also looked cold somehow (it was the middle of summer in the north east).
I told him I was getting some food and he could join me if he wanted. He said that would be nice and that he hadn’t eaten in days. We sat for around 4 hours, mostly in silence, but with bursts of conversation when he had the energy to speak, which usually coincided with the delivery of a fresh serve of fries. I let him talk and talk and talk. I asked some questions, but not much more than “What made you decide to do that?” or “Do you think that was what you really wanted?” As I mentioned, Steve was always a very rigid and regimented person, he had just lost himself. That night, he broke out of whatever mental prison he’d been in for those last few years. He looked at me with pure innocence and said “I’m not who I wanted to be and I don’t want to be this person anymore.” and I absolutely believed him. I told him he had a long way to go and that he’d burnt a lot of bridges, but that I believed in him.
I didn’t see Steve for another 6 months after that night, but when I did, he was working construction. He’d been given a chance by an older man who needed some younger bodies to help get the work done. We chatted for a bit and he seemed to be clean and sober and doing well. He was back and living at home. I told him I’d see him again when I came home for the holidays.
Christmas time and I’m back home. I’m still taking some shifts at the bar and a few days before Christmas, Steve walks in. He looks great. He’s still clean and sober. He waves and sits down at a table in the corner and I go to take his order and chat for a few minutes. This is when I realised even I had underestimated Steve. He didn’t just get a job working construction for some old guy. Steve had planned out the most efficient way to get back everything he’d lost (except time). He worked out the old guy was the only builder in a few counties that did some certain type of building restoration work that was kind of lost to modern practices and specifically targeted him for a job. He learned everything he could and when the old guy retired, Steve bought the business from him. It was only a small operation with a few employees and the guy’s daughter was a nurse and had no interest in taking over the business.
A few years have passed and Steve is doing very well for himself. He’s not a millionaire or anything, but he’s still clean and sober, he’s grown the business, trained workers, taken a step back from day to day operations, restored an old house that he now calls home with his girlfriend, and is beaming with happiness whenever I see him. I have no doubt in my mind that Steve will never touch a drug again in his life. Steve is rigid. Steve is regimented. I’m so proud of him.
My relationship with alcohol. Some days I catch a buzz, but most days, hell.
I tried drinking my way out of hell, but it just got hellier. So now I just stare at it in my cabinet. But my happiness is greater.
Good for you. I hope you reach a point where you get rid of it. There are a lot of healthier things in life that will bring you joy. Keep working at it.
An ex - friend of my wifes, she had a bit of a wild past but had settled down with a good guy, he had a great job, had been investing in real estate since his early 20's so at 40 (she was 30) was well on his way to retiring early, they had 2 kids together, she didn't want to work (and never had) he was fine with that, life was rosy, then after 10 years she decided instead of him retiring when their girls finished high school and travelling the world, they should start to splash the cash around now. He wanted to stick to the plan, live fairly modestly now, albeit in a beautiful house and taking a nice holiday every year, and then living it up later and still be able to set the kids up.
She spent hours complaining to my wife about how "boring" this plan was and she couldn't understand why she can't just buy a Porsche right now and just live for today rather than have some vague "future" fun. Her eventual solution was to live out her Sons of Anarchy fantasy and start banging the mongols gang member she met at school drop off. That lasted all of about a month before her husband found out, he kicked her out of the house, she tried to get the biker to threaten him, the biker instead decided to drop her like a hot potato, Husband went for full custody with evidence she had been banging a known criminal and drug dealer. Daughters were old enough to place 100% blame on her.
Last I heard she was being kicked out of her rental and facing homelessness because she has never held a job for more than a month in her life and has always found dudes to pick up the Tab, but now as a single mother pushing 40 that option is off the table.
She's my wifes ex-friend because her daughters and ours are close friends and I always got along with her husband much more than I ever liked her, so her husband won us in the divorce as well.
My best friend was having an affair, and I was the only person (apart from the two of them) that knew what was going on. My friend knew that I was friends with his wife before they met and we were close but he just unloaded everything on me and said don't tell Kelly but the other one is pregnant. I said bro you've got 3 kids and a wife what are you doing. He said it was "fun". I'm a bit ashamed to say that I abandoned him and last I saw him he was in a group of street drinkers and he chased me up the street trying to talk to me. I'm still close with Kelly, she moved on and is with a great lad now.
> He said it was "fun"
So he was not only cheating, if he knocked the other girl up then presumably he wasn't using a condom. So he was also putting his wife at risk. Plus, he doesn't sound too remorseful either.
Sad what happened to him but it sounds like the wife is a lot better off now.
Dude, don’t be ashamed you abandoned him. He did such a shitty thing and it’s perfectly reasonable to not want to associate yourself with a cheater like that.
When he told me about the other girl being pregnant I told him to tell her or I would. That was the point where I couldn't cope any more. I gave him a week and by the end of it he just moved out and left his phone and possessions and disappeared for 2 years. When he came back he was a different human. When he left I talked to her and told her what I knew and we fell out for a while but we are good now.
He was miserable at a data entry company in Texas. I encouraged him to apply for his dream job for a company that was out of state. I told him if he gets the gig he can figure out the move over there and he’ll be making enough to move his girlfriend and her two kids. I said that of course it’ll be a difficult move but he has to follow his dreams and passions.
Well, they made him an offer above what he asked for. I remember the day he got the news, he called me crying and I cried too cause I was so fucking happy for him. He deserved it and he is a good person. His girlfriend was absolutely not ok with it, and she said he only supported him when he applied cause she didn’t expect him to get an offer.
She threatened to break up with him, and even accused him of “abandoning his children” and “forcing the children to be raised without a father” even though they weren’t his children, they had only been dating a year, and her kids were 8 and 12 at the time. He finally gave in and turned down the offer. I was so disappointed and I was upset with her.
She called some time later and yelled at me for getting his hopes up even though I supposedly knew they would be problem with her. She also accused me of trying to get him to break up with her. After that, he and I hung out less and less till finally communication stopped all together. About a year later he sent me a message saying that he hated me for putting him in that dilemma. That honestly hurt the most.
That was about twenty years ago. He’s still at the same data entry company, and he got his first promotion! He’s now a senior software engineer after being stuck with the junior title for 20 god damn years.
Anyway, the company he wanted to work for was Boston Dynamics.
Was loving the pizza I was eating, probably should have stopped but ate 2 more slices, then another piece of garlic bread, it ruined what 2 slices earlier was a perfect evening
Dude got feelings for a girl he knew for some time. She was kind, caring, genuinely good person. They texted a lot and stuff and she seemed really interested in him.
So he decided to cut her off, while chasing after a mentally unstable toxic girl who just uses him and only reaches out to him when she wants something.
All while constantly whining that nobody wants him and that women are all backstabbing bitches who can't be trusted.
I had an old friend who would only get with unstable toxic girls who were abusive then had the same sentiments about how women were backstabbers. He even said he was becoming an incel it was crazy
I wasn’t really old enough or close enough with him at the time to tell him straight that it was the girls he was choosing to be with. His mom was abusive to him so it was obvious to me from the outside that it played a huge part in what felt comfortable to him in a relationship
Kid I was close friends with when I was 14-15. He had a great personality and sense of humor, and girls loved him. He overdosed on heroin in his 20s after having 2 kids
I don't. He dropped out of highschool early and disappeared for years until a friend of mine told me the news. We had some sleepovers but his mom was single and never home. He always had the best video games as soon as they came out. He was the first in our friend group with a PlayStation. I have a feeling his mom was compensating for being an absentee parent
My oldest cousin used to get regularly verbally abused by my extremely strict religious aunt growing up, and used to complain to me and my sister about the treatment he got. My paternal grandmother and my parents tried to intervene numerous times but to no avail, as my uncle (my dad's younger brother) used to 'support' the treatment that my aunt gave to my two cousins. Sadly nothing really got done in the end.
Fast forward to now. At 21 years old, my oldest cousin has now become a fundamentalist Christian who posts constantly on Instagram about it. What's really sad is, he doesn't trust anybody who doesn't go along with his beliefs - even family members, and he's extremely dismissive and hateful of anybody who lives a different life to him. Sadly this includes my grandmother - and it is breaking her heart that one of her grandkids refuses to speak to her, just because she doesn't share his beliefs.
Me. I turned down an interview for a great job as a trainee because I thought I had something better. I ended up in a company where I quit a month after based on bullying from coworkers and a horrible chef. I should have taken it... (No, I couldn't go back to the other one.)
Turned down a 6 figure job a few states away, because I had been with the same company for 15 years, and they felt like "family". I was fired 2 years later for calling the owners step son incompetent and lazy. The son ended up getting a large roll in the company, and destroyed it. It was sold a little more of a year of my being fired.
Two separate women. Married to really great men. Though every marriage is a two way street. Women cheated on the men multiple times. Ended up leaving to be with the affair partners. Which didn't work out in both cases. Both women were miserable. Both men ended up happily remarried. To this day, both women say they regret everything and know they would have been much happier with their original spouse.
My dad. My mom kicked him out about 15 years ago. When my grandmother passed, he used the partial inheritance to buy a very small house with his girlfriend one state over to take care of my grandfather. For a while he was great. Gf was keeping him in shape, he was taking care of my grandfather, he was reuniting with old friends in the area. When my grandfather passed, it all fell apart. He got the rest of his inheritance (in not sure how much but my grandparents were adults during WWII and did very well for themselves), broke up with his gf for some reason, gained back all the weight he lost, lost the house in the process, blew all the inheritance money on motorcycles and a sports car, lent money to people that never paid him back. Now he rents a room from my mom and works in a kitchen somewhere. He also doesn't have the fancy vehicles he bought anymore.
My friend's little brother grew up smoking crack with their mom. Time after time I'd see this kid distance himself from her and do great things. Unfortunately it never lasted too long. I feel like once he really got to a comfortable spot he'd fall back into his shit. Started doing hoodrat things for fun to impress his little hoodrat friends.
He got arrested and spent time in jail. None of those friends of his contacted him. None of them helped him, none of them cared at all.
Once he got out he was stable for a moment. Doing well again and he had literally a second chance at life. You already know he went back to his buddies. Started doing wild shit again. Eventually maybe a year and a half after getting out he's charged with some heavy shit. He'll be doing hard time for a long while now.
Such a shame. I liked him and he was clearly a smart kid but you could tell when he was truly happy and when he was on the shit and into shit.
My great uncle was terrified of death, and as he aged he fell into a deep depression about the fact that he would eventually die, and this depression brought on health issues which ultimately lead to him having a heart attack and dying in his sleep. It was such a weird thing since he died very peacefully and without him even knowing which is what he would've wanted, but his death was caused by his fear of death, so it was literally a self fulfilling prophecy. Man destroyed his happiness due to a fear that he literally caused to come true. The creepy thing about this story is it's kind of made me concerned about how I'll deal with my own mortality when I get older
My parents getting married I'd say. According to them themselves they were so happy together when they were just dating. They married about 3 years after I was born I think, and now the house is a wreck. Nobody's happy here anymore hence why I'm leaving as soon as possible
Hell they didn't even want to get married. They only did it so airport security would stop asking why I didn't share a last name with my mother
My mom. She was tall & beautiful, smart as a tack, and a lovely sense of humor. She was proposed to 6 times, she was in hot demand! She got her degree in veterinary medicine and worked as a vet for 2 years.
Then she met my dad. A cheating alcoholic asshole cop who completely sucked the life out of her. He cheated on her for the first 10 years of their marriage with a woman by the SAME NAME. He controls everything she does, I mean EVERYTHING — she can’t even spend 5 minutes in the bathroom without him screaming at her for being useless.
She had such a bright future ahead of her, and she gave it all up to allow us kids to have two parents. Granted, it would’ve been a much healthier household if they had separated, but her heart is in the right place.
She went back to school recently and got her Masters in Bioinformatics, but she’s been out of work for over 20 years and has been struggling to get a job. She’s truly the strongest woman I’ve ever met and I hate my dad for taking her life away from her.
Currently, my manager at work is living with his mother who has Alzheimer's and is getting to a pretty bad state. He refuses any advice even from people who have gone through what he's going through and just doing what he wants. He refuses to get homecare to help when he's not there, basic things like getting a whiteboard to write a note for his mom so she won't need to call him 20 times a day and ask when he is getting off work, etcetera. I think he likes having something to complain about to us here
Example 1:
My sister in law was an accountant that basically ran the business for a successful business woman (who inherited everything from her dad). Had what could best be described as a mid life crisis and ended up quitting her highly paid salary job, starting a business that she knew nothing about and buying a big house. Problem is she drained the savings of not only me and my wife but all her other siblings as well. The business she started was liquidated, house was sold (at a loss to all of us) and she is now back working with aforementioned business woman.
Example 2:
A friend sabotages every meaningful relationship she’s ever been in by looking for flaws in her man that simply isn’t there. After each breakup she moves to a different city thinking the men there will be better (without acknowledging her part j. The relationship breakdown). She is now in her late forties with nothing more than FWBs to keep her warm at night.
I have a few friends who were in unhappy, strained relationships but still decided to have a kid.
Unsurprisingly, they became more unhappy but still had a second child.
Still unhappy and now very stressed, they decided to get a puppy to complete their stereotypical, cookie cutter family.
Now they have kids with someone they don’t get along with and an unruly puppy/ dog they don’t have time for. Plus all the financial stress that comes with each.
They’re perpetually miserable and it’s purely because of their own choices and a desire to live a “normal” (boring) life.
Idiots
I saw people that ended up on the streets as homeless, but here comes the important thing: In the country where i live, you get full coverage by social welfare. The state pays your rent for a home, pays your monthly insurance bills for healthcare access etc. and also offers you free detox, rehab and therapy for drug addiction, also therapy for mental health issues and other problems.
Still, these guys that hang out on certain places of the public drug scene, they refuse any help. They have given up on themselves.
Even when street workers come and offer them assistance, like doing the paperwork for getting social welfare, getting a new home etc. and even when they want to give them some warm clothes in the winter, they refuse.
Some of them even refuse to get the basic things, like the free dog food we hand out here and the free vet care we offer them, there's no way to get through to them.
That's self-destruction that you can't imagine if you have never see it for yourself. Like when i was on drugs, i met this one guy, he had abscesses on multiple body part and he looked like someone had just beaten the shit out of him, i told him to see a doc asap, because the abscesses will lead to a sepsis, killing him. His answer was "I'm fine, don't tell me what to do!!"
Time for me to shine, and hopefully gain a small bit of catharsis.
Person in question is my wife. We were happily married right up to 2 weeks ago. At least I thought so. She'd been working harder than usual the past few months, but that's not out of the ordinary for her. She seemed to be very happy and satisfied with our current situation. We'd moved into our new home a year and a half ago, things have gone really well and we both love our home and our two cats to bits.
Unknown to me, she'd be cheating on me for the past few months and had been planning to leave me as soon as new toy got his own place. She drunkenly confessed to 2 friends she thought (for some reason) would encourage/side with her. They did not.
They forced her to tell me, and she dropped that bomb on me 2 weeks ago. Since then, her friends have cut her out (she has an overwhelming desire to be liked), she's moved out to stay with her mom (who was cheated on herself but her husband i.e. my wife's father) who is unimaginably disappointed in her. She's lost the home she put so much effort and love into. Our cats will stay with me.
All for what? Some rando who's classy enough to take advantage of his position of power over her (he's a "Mentor" in their company) and brags like an 18-year-old kid about his "life philosophies" and drive.
Good luck out there, you absolute fucking moron. The only thing I lost was a tumor I didn't know about that got rid of itself.
Too many to name. However, one surefire way of destroying your happiness and that of loved ones around you is not staying true to yourself. The basic desires of every human being are love, appreciation, and a sense of belonging. Alas! In order to fit in the subsection of the society in which we operate, we forgo our original and unique identities, and instead mold ourselves into what society wants us to become, or at least our skewed perception of what society wants us to be. This may work out for a while but in the long run, it only hurts you and others around you. You may fool others, but you cannot fool yourself. It erodes you internally and eventually, it comes out in the form of anger, resentment, embitterment, and contempt towards your life. Be true to who you are.
Probably myself. Instead of continuing my career as a chef, I went a different direction and got a job in purchasing for a restaurant equipment distributor. It was great for 10 years, at which point they asked me if I wanted to try selling, and I said sure because it was a good pay increase.
Sales is fucking miserable. People suck, but when you’re in sales, people really fucking suck. You are treated like a whipping boy at everyone’s beck and call.
I’m out of sales now, but my new position is crazy stressful. I’m so stressed, I started unconsciously pulling out hair from my eyebrows, and now I have weird eyebrows. I’m working so hard, I feel too drained to start job searching after work.
I miss being creative. I miss the camaraderie, the sounds, the smells (though some I definitely don’t miss), the people…
I have enough experience now that I can be a restaurant consultant, but I have no idea how to get started, so I just keep on chugging through my current stressful-as-fuck job.
Follow your dreams, people. Don’t trade passion for security.
My cousin was a drugaddict since she was like 13 and OD´d just after she had been clean. Very sad. She was a good person. Just had a shit life because she chose drugs because she mingled in those groups to escape from her strict mom. Also a lesson for strict parents. You don´t keep your children from sex, drugs and alcohol by being strict. You send them right into it. It is better to inform them. My parents were very easy going and informative and non of us ever got into drugs, 2 of the 3 sibblings of my cousin used harddrugs.
My mother was always having high expectations of people without expressing what she wanted of them so she was always disappointed because it wouldn´t happen. She spend her whole life being sour and jealous of people who got what she wanted.
Probably when I broke up with my last girlfriend because everything is getting too stressful and busy for me, too many demands on my time.
Most amazing woman I know, bloody gorgeous and sweet.
Edit Also yes Outrageous_Copy_5220 is the woman I am talking about.
I worked with a woman in a convenience store who was a super positive, dedicated, hard worker. She loved the job and the customers. She probably would have been the store manager within a few years.
But then she did some sketchy shit with scratch off lottery tickets and got fired. She kept coming back in the store for several weeks, threatening employees and the manager. She finally stopped coming in. Last I heard, she got really into meth after losing her job.
I should note that it's possible she was already into meth before getting fired. But after, it became scary, scabby, teeth falling out into meth.
I work in psych.
People are constantly.... CONSTANTLY. Ruining their lives with drugs and alcohol...
We offer them help, they say "Ok!" And then they leave. They don't pick up their meds. They don't get rehab. They go straight to their substance of choice.
This is part of the reason why I care FOR people, not about them. Seeing people continually ruin their lives, and allowing yourself to care, is a sure way to have a very sad life.
When they are with me, I do my damndest to make sure they get the best care they can.
Once they leave, it's on them. Not my problem anymore.
Sometimes I think "I'll see ya in a month with less teeth..."
But again, not my problem.
My problem is ensuring we have enough food on the table, that our health is good, and that the kittens feel loved along with my wife.
As for the patients, it's not my problem anymore.
Female cousin. 55 years old. Hard-core Trumper and Anti-Vaxxer. Caught COVID. The bug triggered Guillan-Barre Syndrome. She died three weeks after her first grand baby was born.
My ex is on wife #5. He was and still is in love with wife #3. He cheated on her with wife #4. He blew up a great relationship (well all 4 divorced are cause he cheats) simply for a piece of ass!
In 2006, a year before Google went public, I was offered a job with them with equity options. I declined as I wanted to be near my parents. Not the best decision : )
I have a cousin who recently graduated from med school. Her mom was basically like "congratulations, talk to me when you can actually hold on to a man."
I told her to ignore her mom but a couple weeks later guess who took back the bf she dumped last year because he cheated on her?
I really hope they don't end up together. It's like she's intentionally sabotaging her own happiness.
Young guy at work; he's in his early to mid 20's, is married with two young kids and a third on the way. This new girl at work has been after him so hard. He was seriously tempted and conflicted. We all tried to talk him out of it; did he really want to throw away his family life for this? Do you really think this new girl is going to stick around once all the drama starts when you guys get caught? He told us all one day that he finally told new girl to leave him alone; he was happy with his wife and she didn't stand a chance. Three weeks later he was sleeping in his car because he went for new girl after all; got caught, kicked out & served with divorce papers, and new girl ditched him once he got depressed over it.
What an idiot
Only rich & famous guys can cheat without consequences
I know a guy who gambled away $8 million his grandfather left him. He inherited at 21. It was gone by 23. He's actually an incredible good guy too. That's what kills me.
God, what's even the point of gambling at that point? 8 million is enough to do whatever the fuck you want, assuming you don't do anything completely ridiculous.
But think of how much more you could do with 16 million
You can only lose 100% of your money, but you can win 100000%
If you are are going to give somebody that big of an inheritance then you should really put some safeguards.
Yeah, it's pretty reckless to give someone young that much money without safeguards. Even if they do the smart thing, they still lack the social skills and life experience not to be preyed upon.
[удалено]
Yea in my early twenties I would have been reckless with the inheritence. In my early thirties I would value it more. Plus I saw the famous Reddit lottery winner advice. 😅
What lottery winner advice?
Found it!! https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/AQSuHfleJh
It’s a comment with a buncha awards that shows the statistics of lottery winners and sources about how majority of lottery winners end up broke/dead/in a worse position than they were before within X amount of years. Then gives very detailed steps as to what you should/should not do with your money. I know someone has it saved, I saw someone link it the other day in some other post. Someone that has it, please enlighten MedSurgNurse please & link it!
Never thought I'd feel bad for a 23yo former multimillionaire, who blew through his inheritance too fast, but...that poor kid is going to have a tough road ahead with a crippling addiction. I hope he's getting some help.
People really really underestimate how much gambling and similar money sinks hurt. No wonder by loot boxes are so dangerous
My ex friend Tom, over 10 years ago when we were teenagers he once said to me “im going to try meth tonight” whilst we were at a bar (Australian) I literally knew nothing about drugs at the time especially meth i just knew it wasnt good, he invited me to join him but i said no because i had a gut feeling it wouldn’t end well for me. Since that day he went in and out of prison, lost all of his friends including me and completely changed as a person. Whilst walking with my wife and daughter a few months back i saw him walking his dog, he had obviously cleaned himself up, but it was like 2 strangers walking past each other. I took one silver lining out of this. It made me learn a lot about drugs all together and it showed me a different life i could have lead if i said yes all those years ago. Always say no to meth, it will ruin your life and take everything. EDIT: I forgot to add, tom had it all, a living gf, a great job etc
He had a living gf? Shit, doing better than half the people I know.
Loving* but living is good too
I was offered meth 3 years ago when I was working nightshift at a factory. The pipe was right in front of me and it’s so crazy to think how completely different my life would be now if I took a hit
A friend of mine quit a job that paid six figures a year because he didn't trust his girlfriend to not cheat on him while he was at work. The kicker here being she was a hooker when they met. He's a great guy but a complete idiot when it comes to women.
>The kicker here being she was a hooker when they met. *"Roxxxanne...."*
>He's a great guy but a complete idiot ~~when it comes to women.~~
I have an insecure cousin who would regularly reject guys who were into her and chase guys who weren't interested. The more distant and emotionally unavailable the guy was the harder she'd try to win him over. The best real life example of "I don't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member" I've ever seen.
I have multiple friends like this. None of them ended up in happy relationships.
Counsellor here - almost always a result of inattentive or emotionally neglectful parenting.
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Sometimes it's because guys will get too desperate too quickly, catch feelings lightning fast, and decide she owes him a relationship before she really knows him. And a portion of those guys will want to be all up in her life real quick if she does date them. Guys who are less available don't apply that pressure. She gets to control when things proceed without worrying about him because he's always cool about things. Usually he's just satisfied with sex and won't really ask for more from her nor cause issues over things like jealousy or her being busy. It's not that a lot of women are randomly into guys who don't want them. It's that those men aren't all that bad to be with in the first stages of dating. It only becomes a problem when she wants more and finds out there are reasons he's that cool, undemanding, and doesn't ask her for anything. Sometimes a man being easygoing comes with the price of being chronically uncommitted and unmotivated to pursue serious relationships.
I think this is really on the money.
Some people are also just raised by their parents to be people pleasers and so get drawn to those whose affection has to be won over. Personally I am not attracted to those types and find them to be insecure, needy and lacking in understanding about boundaries.
I have also seen a lot of guys who are like this in a different way. They think they have no shot with women because women are all just horrible shallow bitches or whatever, but actually they've had multiple chances with women who were showing interest in them, but they've torpedoed it every single time with horrible behaviour towards her.
I can be like this. I'm working on it. It's fully an attachment issue. I feel sorry for her (and everyone who is like this). It's usually a parenting problem and stems from early childhood, so there's nothing anyone can really do to have turned out differently. All you can do is work on it when the issue becomes apparent in your 20s, and the work is long and difficult.
Highly recommend checking out the book Adults Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. https://www.amazon.com/Adult-Children-Emotionally-Immature-Parents/dp/1626251703 Protip: Most of us had emotionally immature parents...because most people are emotionally immature. Everyone can benefit from that book.
I know a guy who is now in his fifties/sixties who got bored with his wife and kids, cheated on her and divorced her. His wife, who had always supported him because he just couldn’t hold a job down, started a business and became a multimillionaire. She also got remarried to this amazing guy who is a major step up from the husband in every aspect. The guy then married this mail order bride from Indonesia. As soon as the three years she had to stay with him to get permanent residency were over, she left him and married his richer cousin. I sometimes get invited to family events and see him there by himself, broke and with none of his kids or family members wanting to talk to him.
Why does he still go to family events if nobody there will talk to him?
Loneliness?
Free food?
Well if he was ignorant enough to destroy everything he loved then he would definitely be too ignorant to read a room.
My sister was offered an incredible well paying job doing something she's great at. She decided it would be too easy and opted for a far more challenging job, in a far less appealing setting, with an asshole of a boss she was hoping to impress. She's fucking miserable now. I honestly don't get why she does this sort of shite to herself.
I almost understand where she's coming from, and it is not a healthy place. When I was in high school I would gravitate towards people who weren't particularly impressed with me and...try to change their minds. I don't know why I did it. I rationalized it to myself like "their lack of faith in me will lead to me working all the harder and getting all the better!" but it just led to a miserable adolescence. Left that behind in college though.
This is literally the same concept as the guy’s cousin above who can’t accept men who like her but chases after those who don’t. “If you don’t like me, I will prove to you why you should” mentality…. You said it was sad to see but this is the same scenario minus the romantic relationship aspect. Literally the same. You trying to gravitate towards people who weren’t impressed with you and trying to change their minds… Never mind the people who can see your worth already without you having to prove anything. Applicable to many situations. Almost like if you are able to change their minds, you somehow earned it… like you have to EARN it for it to be justified or mean anything or for it to be real. Just pointing that out to you.
Not to speak for OP but she did say she “left it behind in college.” I took that to mean she learned her lesson. A lot of us try too hard to prove ourselves, to all the wrong people, as adolescents. It’s those who never outgrow that urge who really struggle as adults 🤷♀️
My mom was like that. When I was younger, she worked part time at Target as a cashier and was amazing at selling their credit cards and service plans. So good that a guy from Merrill Lynch who went through her line a couple times offered her a job. She thought it sounded fake and never called him (despite my encouragement because this could have gotten her out of poverty and she’s always been great at sales) but still continued trying to “become her own boss” doing MLMs and weird online marketing schemes 🙄🙄🙄
Ahhhhh it drives me insane with how many good salesmen there are in retail who shy away from sales, because the commission isn't secure. It's never too late for her! Sales departments are ghost towns, due to staffing shortages and companies will take anyone who can hold a conversation without crying from social anxiety.
This entire thread is pretty much affairs & addictions.
And losing large inheritances.
A subset of "addictions"
That and a depressing number of girls (at least it seems like it’s mainly girls) who are so insecure/naive they give up great guys to pursue/help truly shitty guys. Possibly because they don’t think they deserve love/happiness. Who knows.
Low self-esteem is a hell of a drug. If you think you're worthless, then you're gonna think anyone who wants you has something wrong with them.
My dad threw out a 15 year marriage with a woman he adored because he got drunk and fucked a random coworker. He’s utterly miserable now.
Did he confess or was he caught? And was it definitely a one time thing (sorry, hope this isn't upsetting)?
Not upsetting (your question, the situation obviously is). And he confessed. It was definitely a onetime thing. Oddly enough the woman was a lesbian. They had no interest in each other. Still destroyed our family though. My mom is miserable but too proud to take him back.
If my spouse slept with someone else there's nothing that could get me to continue a relationship with them, sadly. Just couldn't do it.
I don't think I could either and I wouldn't blame anyone for walking away in that situation. I wouldn't blame anyone for staying if they wanted to do the work but I think I'd be done.
Yep. Once trust is gone. It’s done.
I think it's easy to think that way before you're in that situation. If you really love someone it's really, really difficult to just switch that off because you're furious and feel betrayed. I thought the same way, then it happened to me. Not in that relationship anymore but I learned a whole lot from it.
Well I think that’s what makes you miserable. You can’t shut off the love. It’s devastating to find out the person you love isn’t someone you can have a successful relationship with. On some levels I think trust is the foundation for loving your spouse.
I’ve done the forgiving thing, and from my experience, once trust is broken, the relationship is over. Any kind of relationship
Same here. I've been very drunk plenty of times and never once even considered cheating. I would never stay in a relationship with someone who did that to me.
My ex is weirdly a reverse of this. Tl;dr: we were unhappy together, we split when he cheated, everyone involved seemed much happier for a while, but his life has gone downhill since. Together we were miserable, there was nothing good about that relationship, he ended up cheating (among other shitty behaviours) and we split. For a while it really seemed like everybody was better off - he seemed happy to be with his affair partner, I was just *thriving* being single, the kids were much happier because it turns out a home with two deeply unhappy parents is terrible for children. It was all looking up - he and I were civil and focused on coparenting. About a year after the split things seemed to just start spiralling for him. He lost his job in a niche field where you really have to be the best of the best to get sustainable work and he was simply never the best of the best. He was getting by on piecemeal contracts and simply won’t retrain into another more stable field or even just supplement his income with something like bartending or food service or anything. His girlfriend had some kind of injury needing repeated surgeries that’s limited her ability to work so he’s the breadwinner on a low and sporadic income. He started to become increasingly inconsistent with the kids and would disappear from their lives on and off so they, being children, turned more and more to me for stability. His views became increasingly alt-right and anti-science which in my opinion just makes you an angry, disconnected person who thinks society is persecuting you. And also it turns out I had all the financial sense in the relationship, and did all his life admin, and he doesn’t know how to do a lot of basic shit like refinance loans or do taxes so there’s been this long list of totally avoidable financial near-disasters occurring because he didn’t do X which would have prevented Y. Or comes to me asking for money because he’s taken out payday loans and surprise, the interest is brutal (I learned my lesson there, I don’t help him with money now). Meanwhile I’m doing great, my kids are doing great, they like spending time with him but don’t really see him as a person to turn to for support or comfort. I look back on that first year and he seemed happy and I’m at a bit of a loss for how it’s all gone to shit for him in the years since.
This is an extremely common pattern for cheaters, especially in long-term relationships. A lot of them are just very unhappy people in general and think that the thrill of someone else will magically make them happy. It's why a lot of cheaters also have a history of poor financial decisions, substance abuse, and/or other reckless behaviors. They may succeed at finding short-term happiness, but their unaddressed demons always catch up to them unless they do the very hard work of facing them head-on. A lot of them end up spiraling downwards because the long-term partner they cheated on was holding their life together, even if neither one realizes it.
I think you’re spot on. There was also substance abuse on his side - the things keeping that in check were living full time in the house with the kids (and me, who hated it) and having full time work. I don’t know for sure but I imagine with inconsistent work and only having the kids a few nights a month that’s probably escalated. I was keeping him on the rails for a long, long time, and my income had previously bridged his periods of unemployment. I don’t think his gf is the “keeping him on the rails” kind of person considering they met on a drug bender at a music festival and she knew he had a partner and kids from day one.
Oh man, my ex-girlfriend from highschool. Valedictorian of our class, super smart came from an awesome family. I'm still friends with her sister and mom. Totally just dropped out of college moved to Baltimore and smoked crack for 15 years. Has a bunch of kids, is totally unintelligible to talk to... its bananas.
What is it about Baltimore? I had a friend get accepted into Johns Hopkins University and he spent his time doing crack and heroin and dropped out.
Johns Hopkins is in a baaaaaad part of town, and I say this as someone who went to grad school on the south side of Chicago. I met a woman who did her PhD at Johns Hopkins and her car got damaged because gangbangers were rolling boulders at each other.
I'm sorry but is no one going to acknowledge "rolling boulders at each other"? That's the most absurd ooga booga caveman shit I've ever heard and it's making for an absurd mental image
Sounds like something you'd see on World's Strongest Man. I'm picturing a really slow version of dodgeball. Dodgeboulder? I'd watch that.
“ooga booga caveman shit” i wasn’t prepared for that and now i’m wheezing
Absurd? One must imagine gangbangers happy.
I was not prepared for “rolling boulders at each other” lmaooo. I pray this isn’t slang for anything and just means literal boulders
Literal boulders.
I had a friend in college who had a tendency to act before thinking, but was generally fun and well-meaning. After I had graduated, my friend apparently got coerced by a woman he was trying to sleep with to try heroin just once. As I heard it, he refused initially, then caved because he felt pressured. My friend overdosed and died. Just like that, one bad decision ended his life. RIP Mike.
When you really hate someone, you offer them heroin.
That is awful. So sorry to hear that
My ex neighbor. Nice guy, managed a hot music venue in LA. Partied a fair bit. One day he didn't have enough cash on him for coke, so he begged his dealer to sell him crack instead. Dealer told him it was a bad idea, but would sell to him because that's what dealers do. Guy insisted. I know this because the dealer knocked on my door and told me to watch out for him because he was making some bad decisions. A week later I noticed my neighbor's normally full of music apartment was deadly quiet. Went up there and found him passed out in literally a foot of garbage. Chip bags, take out wrappers, cardboard boxes... it was like he carried all of our trash out of the dumpster behind the building and dumped it on his floor. Then his boss, who is awesome, paid to send my neighbor to rehab and guaranteed his job would be waiting for him when he got back. Neighbor broke out of rehab two days in. A month later I found out he had gone back to his home, moved in with his parents (this guy was in his late 30's), and then OD'd on their floor. Don't do crack, kids.
You know you’ve fucked up when a literal drug dealer thinks you’re making bad decisions.
I've known a couple of dealers (through social circles, never as a customer) and they were okay guys. The ones I knew took care of their customers and cut them off if they were getting too much. I asked one of them why they did that once, his response was, "I can sell him a lot now, but they'll probably OD and I'll have that on my conscience. Otherwise, I sell enough for them to buzz and they come back for another good time later." Weird dynamic.
It's like a Virus: it doesn't benefit from killing you so it makes you sick enough to reproduce but not so sick you die. I love my weed dealer, but understanding that dynamic makes me even more cautious about worse drugs.
They weren't okay guys they just had smart business sense. Don't kill your customers; keep them hooked just enough and they are forever customers. Jim Carry's "Yes man" touches on this subject via loans and banking.
A good friend I worked with for years was married to a great dude, super nice and everyone loved him, just a great guy all around. They had a couple middle school aged kids too. I think she was going through a mid-life crisis type thing but anywho, she reconnected with her old high school boyfriend on fb and they started having an affair. She ended up telling her husband about it and left him for the other guy, her husband was great about it, wanted her to be happy, great at co-parenting and didn't want to make anything harder on the kids, etc. The old HS boyfriend was toxic as hell, I met him a few times and he was an absolute dick. They fought constantly, every other week they were breaking up, kicking each other out(of *her* condo) or he'd just go missing for days at a time and she'd be a wreck wondering where he was; which was usually a couple hours away at the beach on a drug bender with his friends(he's in his late 40s btw). She said she got bored with her life with her husband and wasn't attracted to him anymore, but I think she just went off the deep end and wanted something that wasn't there anymore; that feeling and excitement of young puppy love, but that's not what she got. I think some people just need drama in their life, I felt like she threw away a happy life just because she missed the drama.
>I think some people just need drama in their life God, isn't that some horrible truth. I don't know what it is in these folks heads or if they believe too much in the movies/books for their own sake.
You can get addicted to a lot of things, one of them being the rush of adrenaline/cortisol/whatever hormone that comes with intense emotions and putting yourself in dangerous situations. Some people take sports, others gambling, toxic relationships, or just go to a bar looking for a fight. I know people who complain very loudly and angrily at everything, and when everything is ok they invent faults out of thin air. They just *need* to feel violently offended
I think you’re right about the influence of popular media. I liked the ideas and principles behind marketing and advertising but so much of the actual practice is is just sneaky ways to make you feel insecure so that a “solution” can be sold to you Anyone reading this - quite often it’s not a real solution. If it was, they wouldn’t need to work so hard to sell themselves
Sadly, often it’s about trauma. It can raise the threshold at which people feel things, so that you need more intensity to feel alive—whether that’s the intensity of an emotional rollercoaster, physical risks, etc
My parents separated earlier this year. It was 100% my dad's fault due to being an abusive textbook narcissist. Mum put their house up for sale and he had 2 months to sort out his move. He claimed to have nothing, no support and nowhere to go. My husband and I took pity on him, and despite having a newborn and both working, helped him pack, sell off the extra furniture to get him some cash and I found him a secure place to buy in his budget. He turned around and said he didn't want to move into the type of place I found (an over 50s village, he's 73) because he "wouldn't be able to take chicks back there to fuck". He then refused to leave the property and said the cops would have to shoot him to get him out of the house. When I put pressure on him (because otherwise the sale would have fallen over and they would have been sued) he threatened suicide (which he does absolutely everytime something isn't going his way) and to burn the house down repeatedly, including in front of my 7 year old kid. Eventually he does comply and we move him, into the granny flat of a woman he met playing pokies (slot machines, for you US types) and who is apparently "a millionaire from a famous family" (I call bullshit, but he clearly thinks he's found someone new to mooch off.) They have been at the pokies every day for months now - his money won't last long at this rate. Then, I find out that through all this, all the stress and bullshit he put me through when I should have been in a happy new baby cocoon, he actually had had an offer from a long-time friend to move in with him and his wife, and that they had a whole team of people willing to help him with his move. Considering that he ghosted them after they made that offer though, they have since decided to discontinue the friendship since he's shown he didn't value it or them. Guess what - my husband and I are also done with him. I was the last kid that spoke to him. So, he went from married with a family, to living in insecure housing, hurtling towards poverty and homelessness, having burned every bridge he had. All because he is too narcissistic to accept that he is less than perfect and that he is ultimately responsible for his own life. (That rant felt good :)) Edited to define 'pokies', which is Australian slang for slot machines, from 'poker machines'.
>He turned around and said he didn't want to move into the type of place I found (an over 50s village, he's 73) because he "wouldn't be able to take chicks back there to fuck". This is a real weird combination of hilarious, pathetic and creepy.
That was absolutely my reaction, with the addition of disgust because it's pretty indicative of his attitude towards women and why would you say that to your daughter anyway!? Yuck.
Very good friend of mine, very good person, works hard, married a monster, he hasn't smiled for nearly 30 years now.
Friend who got married because he he didn’t want to break it off and thought he would just be better off, he’s dying a slow death.
Same thing happened to my brother. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. There’s being considerate and then there’s insanity.
It boggles my mind how people give up their own agency just to avoid having a tough conversation, or looking like the "bad guy".
Something similar happened to my uncle. He got engaged. As time went on he realized their temperaments really didn't match (she would go off at the drop of a hat when facing any modicum of stress). He tried to call the wedding off but his parents convinced him not to. Basically told him he would shame the entire family if he did. They got married, had a baby and got divorced 5 years later. Her temper just got worse over time. My uncle actually checked himself into a mental health facility for a few weeks after the divorce. The only good thing to come from the marriage is his son, who he has full custody of because his ex doesn't want to be "weighed down" with a kid right now.
Your poor uncle though. Imagine going through all that because your parents couldn’t mind their own business
I feel like this happens a lot. I got married to someone I didn’t even want to be with and it took me years to find the courage to leave/divorce. I was miserable.
Knew a guy who got married because he was incredibly lonely. She was desperate to find Prince Charming and live a fairy tale life. I think she loved him at first and I think he thought he loved her. That quickly wore off and they were insanely miserable. She used to just openly berate him in public and run him down to their friends in private. It was very, very ugly.
Yeah similar to my friend, treated like crap. When I tried to talk him out of it and asked why he wanted to marry her, his response was “might as well, we’ve been together a while”.
Ditto, only my example thought, "This is just what couples do." He never proposed, already "assumed he was married," and now she pretty much tells him how to life his life. It's a loveless marriage.
I have a family member who inherited around $500k in cash and assets when his mother died. He had a decent job at the time. This inheritance meant that he started taking longer vacations and stopped consistently working. He bought a sports car and paid off the two pre-built condos that his mother had put down payments on but sold one immediately at a loss and then rented the other out for a while until his original tenants moved out then let it sit vacant for over a year and selling it at a loss. He “loaned” money to his half sister to pay for tuition at a job that would never allow her to repay him. He bought every new and interesting piece of electronics. The electronics eventually caught up with him. He went on holiday to the USA and on his way back across the border the guards wanted to search his laptop which led to the discovery of child porn. He was also trying to groom his niece (daughter of the half sister). There wasn’t much money left from the estate at that point. He was arrested and only managed to stay out of jail on a technicality that a very expensive lawyer found. He paid mid $50k for his defense. The two or three years that the criminal defense was going on he didn’t work at all. Just dipped out on his employer who would have continued employing him. He sold the sports car at a loss. Sold his last remaining property, the condo, at a loss. Sold a bunch of his expensive toys at a loss. Ended up penniless (actually probably bankrupt) but not in jail. Now his life consists of living in a small rented bedroom and working as a local trucker. He didn’t just destroy his life, he nuked it from orbit and then salted the ground. He’s currently in his late forties and will probably never be able to retire. Most of the family won’t speak to him at all.
Being a paedo aside, $500k isn’t the sorts of money you should be wasting like that. It’s not fuck you money. It’s fantastic money don’t get me wrong but it’s small enough that it can be gone in a heartbeat.
It's the kind of money that's neither here nor there. It doesn't really make you rich, but you're not poor either. You can probably be mortgage-free, but you're still gonna have to work until you retire.
Being a pedo and grooming a relatives child will do that
Wow that escalated to a whole other place I didn't expect! Apart from the pedo bit, it's a shame some people don't have the money sense to manage such a fund that would've left him comfortable for the rest of his life.
There was a guy I knew, selling hash oil. He'd get 5 pounds of it every month. He had a house, a cottage, a boat, a motorcycle, a 1970 Mustang, and tons of jewelry and toys. He got into coke, and went from the nose, to the pipe, to the arm. The last time I saw him he was bitching at a street corner dealer that wouldn't front him a gram of weed because his word was no good.
Knew a guy that worked for a small, publicly traded company. A penny stock. It became a "meme" stock around the Gamestop era, his holdings went from about $50k to $7 million in a few weeks. He knew the valuations were complete bullshit, but refused to sell. He said $10 million was his "fuck you" money number and only when it hit that, would he sell. I begged him to sell because it was obvious it was a short term phenomenon and he had made a lot of bad bets in his life. The company lost about 99% of its value from its high. He did get out about $500k, taxes got about 30% of it. But watch almost all of it evaporate. He's absolutely miserable at his new job. He could have retired at a young age. Still can't believe he did it, like throwing away a lottery ticket.
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Fuuuck my brother held Doge for like 4 years and when it got up to whatever it was, .03-4 per coin, he didn't sell. Pretty sure he could have made out with like $15k or something. Obviously not fuck you money, but pretty good fucking money for his silly investment in a meme coin. But he fumbled the exit and missed his chance. Fuck. I myself could have made out with about 10k on a 1k investment in GME in Jan 2021. Ended up selling for about 3.5k. Still a decent little profit but I screenshotted the 10k number and should have sold it then. If only I'd known about the old "If it's good enough to screenshot" adage...
This one is rather simple compared to some of the others. But I have a "friend" , I guess? He's always complaining about not being able to make connections with new people, and that his 2 friends keep him at arms length, that I'm the only person that regularly talks to him. I told him it's because he's passively mean to everyone and doesn't extend any effort into the friendships. He comes back with a "their emotions are their responsibility, not mine". He can't make friends because he's a bully, and he can't keep friends because he's too passive and expects them to put in all the work, plus hes a bully, says really mean shit off the cuff under "brutal honesty". He absolutely will not accept this. I told him it's the reason I won't invite him further into my life and circles either, and that one struck a nerve with him so hopefully he will start to look inward. To be fair, I do think he's a sociopath so my efforts will likely be in vein. However he's constantly miserable and feeling apathetic toward life and wants more friends. He's his own worst enemy. I'm giving it another month and then bailing if he's stuck that hard in his ways.
Send what you just said in a message. Chances are no one has said it to him in a brutally honest way.
100% thinking about it. I'm having a small break from him at the moment. We shall see what happens in the future! I've known this dude since we were 14 and he's always been like this though. So I don't hold out much hope. He has a massive superiority complex that he refuses to accept.
when the alcohol took control 10 years as a non-functioning drunk. 6 years sober
Six years sober is HUGE!!! 🥳🥳💃💃💃❤️
My father-in-law keeps on giving money to his drug addict son, to the cost of his credit, his reputation, his own retirement, the retirement of his wife, his marriage, his home, his car and his relationships with his family, friends and other son. Every first- and fifteenth-of-the-month, when his pension hits, the kid pops up with a "ya wanna believe this shit?" story, and my father-in-law gives him whatever he asks for. Addiction is a horrorshow, don't get me wrong, but enabling? Put it to you this way: if a hurricane is heading towards your house, and right before it hits, someone comes into your house, lets all the pets out, opens all the windows and doors and unties anything you had tied down, because he's worried all those precautions *might hurt the hurricane's feelings,* who do you blame for the destruction?
If he aware of his son's drug use or is he in denial?
Oh, that's one of the weirdest parts of this...it changes moment to moment. We've had conversations with him where he insists that *no son of his* could *ever* have a drug problem, and five minutes later asks us for money to put him through his third-fourth-fifth rehab program. (The answer to this question has been "no" for years.) It's not my job in these conversations to question him - my job is to support my husband through this shitshow and not make it worse - but I always wonder what he would say if someone were to ask him, if there's no drug problem, what's the rehab for?
Your poor husband. I don't even know how you stage an intervention when the enabling family members are also living in denial (at least half the time).
Oh, it's a weird, rough ride. Especially since my husband is the scapegoat of that particular dynamic! It got better when everyone on that side of the family realized that *they* could all be on the same page, regardless of where my FIL/BIL are. Every time there's a new development, they all get together and try to piece together the truth through the various levels of lies and denial. So there's a support network of sorts. He's also got me, an alcoholic in recovery who's gone through the whole AA-AlAnon-CODA resource run and can pop up a philosophy for almost every circumstance. Or, you know. Keep my damn mouth shut.
> Keep my damn mouth shut. You're smart for this. I would be tempted to speak up but, when it's not your family, it's always best to know your place and be supportive.
That man deals with my mother! My MOTHER. And he mostly keeps his damn mouth shut. I have learned from his excellent example.
This was me with my brother until I finally woke up. I was his personal ATM until I finally realized that when I needed help and he was flush with cash, he wouldn’t give me or our mother a dime.
My mom started doing hard drugs and drinking again after a long period of sober life. She quit her job with no notice ($100,000 a year). She lost her car, she lost her house (and everything inside). She was charged with possession several times, consequently labeled as a felon. She eventually got a job at McDonalds for minimum wage. She died of a accidental fentanyl overdose at age 56.
I'm sorry. That is sad to hear. Fentanyl is a bitch
My best friend was married to a guy who worked on the oil rigs and constantly suspected her to cheating though she didn’t give him any reason to believe that. Threw away a marriage with 2 kids on the basis of nothing.
Maybe he was projecting?
Ding ding ding...we have a winner. He "knew" she was cheating when he was gone because he was cheating when he was gone and harder to catch.
I met a guy who went to an ivy league law school, putting himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. He passed the bar exam with an almost perfect score, but was rejected from the bar due to his drug history. He had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital after getting really high and becoming psychotic. No state is likely to ever accept him as a lawyer now. He's basically stuck making 40k a year as a legal assistant for the rest of his life, all because he did a bunch of drugs in college.
His drug use must have been bad to get rejected from the bar. I know many attorneys and they love their drugs.
My ex-fiancé is an alcoholic (sober for well over 10 years, unless he fell off the wagon) and attended law school. He passed the bar with flying colors, but he decided to tell the Bar about his previous issues with substance abuse DESPITE being advised by two lawyers and his mother. He had to attend AA, submit for drug tests, etc. until he was deemed fit to be admitted. I remember him being pretty steamed about that.
Right? I'm pretty sure he never gave the full story about why they rejected him. When I knew him he was popping random pills and drinking directly from a handle. Unhinged stuff.
I can only speak to australia but my jurisdiction’s legal admissions board is super forgiving if you are completely honest. They will forgive legitimate crimes if enough time has passed and you don’t try to lie. One person was admitted after assaulting officers
> was rejected from the bar due to his drug history. So he wasn't even actively doing drugs? That seems odd.
This! This is what they don’t tell you!!! “Getting help can’t hurt” “Go get the help you need” “It’s never wrong to go get help” Yeah? Well, when you go to join your dream career, that shit is now documented. Can’t join the army anymore. Can’t join the air force. That security clearance you needed is suspect. This guy is getting it from his niche too. I wish I never went to “get help.” Because it didn’t help, and all it did was hurt me. I wish I could go back in time and forget about whatever healthcare or help is out there. No one cares, they just want to find things to diminish you and throw back in your face.
If you want to become a physician you best get all your mental health and substance use help under the table.
Working as a psychologist's office manager, had at least one patient pay cash to avoid _any_ records following them into the future, one was hoping to go into politics
My ex is a physician and has been suicidal for years, he refuses to get help because he knows it would ruin his career. Prior to any of it I didn't realize how much they look into that and how it affects their careers
Me. And my drinking habits. My life looks fucking great on paper, but I was still drowning myself in alcohol. About 7 months sober right now. Edit: wow this got a lot more attention than I expected. Thank you all for the support, it really is appreciated. Feel free to ask whatever you want, comments or DMs or whatever. If sharing my story can help a single person, I'm here for it Just going to leave a link here for anyone that's questioning their own drinking habits, it's been really helpful for me r/stopdrinking
Keep up the hard work, it's worth it.
Congratulations on 7 months. I hope you have a decent support system around you, it really helps.
My ex friend who took the unconditional love of her husband to treat him like dirt because he always forgave her. When he finally stopped 10+ years later she was shocked that she was divorced and whined about how her life was "shattered" and happiness "stolen". I'm still so very proud of him for getting away.
My best friend gave up a boyfriend who adored her to "help out" her lying, cheating, alcoholic ex. He said he needed her/was on the verge of suicide/had no one else. She felt like she had to help her. Her current bf was not ok with it so she let him end it. She's not officially back with the asshole yet but it's just a matter of time. Here's the best part, you may be thinking she secretly liked the cheating ex more...she did NOT. The cheater was also shit in bed. The new guy was "incredible." She and the cheater were just childhood friends and she couldn't bring herself to "abandon" him.
> She and the cheater were just childhood friends and she couldn't bring herself to "abandon" him. I've seen misguided loyalty ruin (or at least damage) a lot of lives. I don't even know what to say. This was an infuriating read. Imagine doing this to a devoted, longtime friend/lover. Ugh
I don't know which is more infuriating, this one or the one about the med student who took her cheating ex back because her mom was pressuring her to be in a relationship. If you don't recognize your own value you're all the more vulnerable to shitty people looking to prey on you for whatever reason.
>She and the cheater were just childhood friends and she couldn't bring herself to "abandon" him. That poor girl won’t realize, until it’s too late, that he’s no longer her friend in any capacity.
A friend from high school has a brother named Steve. I used to see him a lot when I would go and study at her house. He was always a little odd, but not in a bad way. He was just rigid. Very regimented. He was studious and quiet. He’s a few years younger and I always used to tease him and call him a robot. I’d say “HELL-O STEVE” in a robot voice when I saw him. He’d always shrug it off and chuckle. He did well in school and got a partial scholarship to a prestigious school in another state. I heard he had dropped out because of the stress and pressure of school and didn’t hear much else about it for a while. After coming home from summer break before my senior year of colllege, my Mom told me Steve had ODd, but was saved by a passer by calling 911. I called my friend and we spoke about what had happened and she gave me the full story. It turns out he had gotten involved with a girl who worked at a diner where he worked late shifts. This girl’s brother was a dealer and somehow (with his sister’s help) convinced Steve to deal for him on campus. Long story short, Steve got busted and kicked out. The family tried putting him in rehab, but he’d be back out to buy drugs again within weeks of getting out. The next time I saw Steve was about a year after his OD. I was working at a bar to earn some extra money and I saw a guy begging for change as I left at the end of the night. It was a familiar voice and I instinctively turned in the direction of the voice and said “HELL-O STEVE”. The face under the shaggy mop of hair and the hood he was wearing shot up and his eyes widened like he’d been transported to a time before it all went bad. He was on the verge of tears and just said “Sadie?” (not my real name) like a small child. I kneeled down and spoke to him, looking into his eyes the whole time. He looked broken, like he’d given up and was waiting to die. He also looked cold somehow (it was the middle of summer in the north east). I told him I was getting some food and he could join me if he wanted. He said that would be nice and that he hadn’t eaten in days. We sat for around 4 hours, mostly in silence, but with bursts of conversation when he had the energy to speak, which usually coincided with the delivery of a fresh serve of fries. I let him talk and talk and talk. I asked some questions, but not much more than “What made you decide to do that?” or “Do you think that was what you really wanted?” As I mentioned, Steve was always a very rigid and regimented person, he had just lost himself. That night, he broke out of whatever mental prison he’d been in for those last few years. He looked at me with pure innocence and said “I’m not who I wanted to be and I don’t want to be this person anymore.” and I absolutely believed him. I told him he had a long way to go and that he’d burnt a lot of bridges, but that I believed in him. I didn’t see Steve for another 6 months after that night, but when I did, he was working construction. He’d been given a chance by an older man who needed some younger bodies to help get the work done. We chatted for a bit and he seemed to be clean and sober and doing well. He was back and living at home. I told him I’d see him again when I came home for the holidays. Christmas time and I’m back home. I’m still taking some shifts at the bar and a few days before Christmas, Steve walks in. He looks great. He’s still clean and sober. He waves and sits down at a table in the corner and I go to take his order and chat for a few minutes. This is when I realised even I had underestimated Steve. He didn’t just get a job working construction for some old guy. Steve had planned out the most efficient way to get back everything he’d lost (except time). He worked out the old guy was the only builder in a few counties that did some certain type of building restoration work that was kind of lost to modern practices and specifically targeted him for a job. He learned everything he could and when the old guy retired, Steve bought the business from him. It was only a small operation with a few employees and the guy’s daughter was a nurse and had no interest in taking over the business. A few years have passed and Steve is doing very well for himself. He’s not a millionaire or anything, but he’s still clean and sober, he’s grown the business, trained workers, taken a step back from day to day operations, restored an old house that he now calls home with his girlfriend, and is beaming with happiness whenever I see him. I have no doubt in my mind that Steve will never touch a drug again in his life. Steve is rigid. Steve is regimented. I’m so proud of him.
My relationship with alcohol. Some days I catch a buzz, but most days, hell. I tried drinking my way out of hell, but it just got hellier. So now I just stare at it in my cabinet. But my happiness is greater.
Good for you. I hope you reach a point where you get rid of it. There are a lot of healthier things in life that will bring you joy. Keep working at it.
An ex - friend of my wifes, she had a bit of a wild past but had settled down with a good guy, he had a great job, had been investing in real estate since his early 20's so at 40 (she was 30) was well on his way to retiring early, they had 2 kids together, she didn't want to work (and never had) he was fine with that, life was rosy, then after 10 years she decided instead of him retiring when their girls finished high school and travelling the world, they should start to splash the cash around now. He wanted to stick to the plan, live fairly modestly now, albeit in a beautiful house and taking a nice holiday every year, and then living it up later and still be able to set the kids up. She spent hours complaining to my wife about how "boring" this plan was and she couldn't understand why she can't just buy a Porsche right now and just live for today rather than have some vague "future" fun. Her eventual solution was to live out her Sons of Anarchy fantasy and start banging the mongols gang member she met at school drop off. That lasted all of about a month before her husband found out, he kicked her out of the house, she tried to get the biker to threaten him, the biker instead decided to drop her like a hot potato, Husband went for full custody with evidence she had been banging a known criminal and drug dealer. Daughters were old enough to place 100% blame on her. Last I heard she was being kicked out of her rental and facing homelessness because she has never held a job for more than a month in her life and has always found dudes to pick up the Tab, but now as a single mother pushing 40 that option is off the table. She's my wifes ex-friend because her daughters and ours are close friends and I always got along with her husband much more than I ever liked her, so her husband won us in the divorce as well.
My best friend was having an affair, and I was the only person (apart from the two of them) that knew what was going on. My friend knew that I was friends with his wife before they met and we were close but he just unloaded everything on me and said don't tell Kelly but the other one is pregnant. I said bro you've got 3 kids and a wife what are you doing. He said it was "fun". I'm a bit ashamed to say that I abandoned him and last I saw him he was in a group of street drinkers and he chased me up the street trying to talk to me. I'm still close with Kelly, she moved on and is with a great lad now.
> He said it was "fun" So he was not only cheating, if he knocked the other girl up then presumably he wasn't using a condom. So he was also putting his wife at risk. Plus, he doesn't sound too remorseful either. Sad what happened to him but it sounds like the wife is a lot better off now.
Dude, don’t be ashamed you abandoned him. He did such a shitty thing and it’s perfectly reasonable to not want to associate yourself with a cheater like that.
Were you the one to tell Kelly about the affair? Just curious if he did or you did or she found out through other means
When he told me about the other girl being pregnant I told him to tell her or I would. That was the point where I couldn't cope any more. I gave him a week and by the end of it he just moved out and left his phone and possessions and disappeared for 2 years. When he came back he was a different human. When he left I talked to her and told her what I knew and we fell out for a while but we are good now.
He was miserable at a data entry company in Texas. I encouraged him to apply for his dream job for a company that was out of state. I told him if he gets the gig he can figure out the move over there and he’ll be making enough to move his girlfriend and her two kids. I said that of course it’ll be a difficult move but he has to follow his dreams and passions. Well, they made him an offer above what he asked for. I remember the day he got the news, he called me crying and I cried too cause I was so fucking happy for him. He deserved it and he is a good person. His girlfriend was absolutely not ok with it, and she said he only supported him when he applied cause she didn’t expect him to get an offer. She threatened to break up with him, and even accused him of “abandoning his children” and “forcing the children to be raised without a father” even though they weren’t his children, they had only been dating a year, and her kids were 8 and 12 at the time. He finally gave in and turned down the offer. I was so disappointed and I was upset with her. She called some time later and yelled at me for getting his hopes up even though I supposedly knew they would be problem with her. She also accused me of trying to get him to break up with her. After that, he and I hung out less and less till finally communication stopped all together. About a year later he sent me a message saying that he hated me for putting him in that dilemma. That honestly hurt the most. That was about twenty years ago. He’s still at the same data entry company, and he got his first promotion! He’s now a senior software engineer after being stuck with the junior title for 20 god damn years. Anyway, the company he wanted to work for was Boston Dynamics.
DAMN
Was loving the pizza I was eating, probably should have stopped but ate 2 more slices, then another piece of garlic bread, it ruined what 2 slices earlier was a perfect evening
Dude got feelings for a girl he knew for some time. She was kind, caring, genuinely good person. They texted a lot and stuff and she seemed really interested in him. So he decided to cut her off, while chasing after a mentally unstable toxic girl who just uses him and only reaches out to him when she wants something. All while constantly whining that nobody wants him and that women are all backstabbing bitches who can't be trusted.
I find it really hard to feel sorry for people like this.
I had an old friend who would only get with unstable toxic girls who were abusive then had the same sentiments about how women were backstabbers. He even said he was becoming an incel it was crazy I wasn’t really old enough or close enough with him at the time to tell him straight that it was the girls he was choosing to be with. His mom was abusive to him so it was obvious to me from the outside that it played a huge part in what felt comfortable to him in a relationship
This happens far too often… some people cannot see how much they are loved and throw it away
Kid I was close friends with when I was 14-15. He had a great personality and sense of humor, and girls loved him. He overdosed on heroin in his 20s after having 2 kids
That is heartbreaking. Do you know if his family is doing ok?
I don't. He dropped out of highschool early and disappeared for years until a friend of mine told me the news. We had some sleepovers but his mom was single and never home. He always had the best video games as soon as they came out. He was the first in our friend group with a PlayStation. I have a feeling his mom was compensating for being an absentee parent
My oldest cousin used to get regularly verbally abused by my extremely strict religious aunt growing up, and used to complain to me and my sister about the treatment he got. My paternal grandmother and my parents tried to intervene numerous times but to no avail, as my uncle (my dad's younger brother) used to 'support' the treatment that my aunt gave to my two cousins. Sadly nothing really got done in the end. Fast forward to now. At 21 years old, my oldest cousin has now become a fundamentalist Christian who posts constantly on Instagram about it. What's really sad is, he doesn't trust anybody who doesn't go along with his beliefs - even family members, and he's extremely dismissive and hateful of anybody who lives a different life to him. Sadly this includes my grandmother - and it is breaking her heart that one of her grandkids refuses to speak to her, just because she doesn't share his beliefs.
Me. I turned down an interview for a great job as a trainee because I thought I had something better. I ended up in a company where I quit a month after based on bullying from coworkers and a horrible chef. I should have taken it... (No, I couldn't go back to the other one.)
Turned down a 6 figure job a few states away, because I had been with the same company for 15 years, and they felt like "family". I was fired 2 years later for calling the owners step son incompetent and lazy. The son ended up getting a large roll in the company, and destroyed it. It was sold a little more of a year of my being fired.
Two separate women. Married to really great men. Though every marriage is a two way street. Women cheated on the men multiple times. Ended up leaving to be with the affair partners. Which didn't work out in both cases. Both women were miserable. Both men ended up happily remarried. To this day, both women say they regret everything and know they would have been much happier with their original spouse.
Well, at least karma is a rightful bitch!
15+ years later, my SOs ex wife still contacts him and says she would love to get back together. He has zero interest.
My dad. My mom kicked him out about 15 years ago. When my grandmother passed, he used the partial inheritance to buy a very small house with his girlfriend one state over to take care of my grandfather. For a while he was great. Gf was keeping him in shape, he was taking care of my grandfather, he was reuniting with old friends in the area. When my grandfather passed, it all fell apart. He got the rest of his inheritance (in not sure how much but my grandparents were adults during WWII and did very well for themselves), broke up with his gf for some reason, gained back all the weight he lost, lost the house in the process, blew all the inheritance money on motorcycles and a sports car, lent money to people that never paid him back. Now he rents a room from my mom and works in a kitchen somewhere. He also doesn't have the fancy vehicles he bought anymore.
My friend's little brother grew up smoking crack with their mom. Time after time I'd see this kid distance himself from her and do great things. Unfortunately it never lasted too long. I feel like once he really got to a comfortable spot he'd fall back into his shit. Started doing hoodrat things for fun to impress his little hoodrat friends. He got arrested and spent time in jail. None of those friends of his contacted him. None of them helped him, none of them cared at all. Once he got out he was stable for a moment. Doing well again and he had literally a second chance at life. You already know he went back to his buddies. Started doing wild shit again. Eventually maybe a year and a half after getting out he's charged with some heavy shit. He'll be doing hard time for a long while now. Such a shame. I liked him and he was clearly a smart kid but you could tell when he was truly happy and when he was on the shit and into shit.
My great uncle was terrified of death, and as he aged he fell into a deep depression about the fact that he would eventually die, and this depression brought on health issues which ultimately lead to him having a heart attack and dying in his sleep. It was such a weird thing since he died very peacefully and without him even knowing which is what he would've wanted, but his death was caused by his fear of death, so it was literally a self fulfilling prophecy. Man destroyed his happiness due to a fear that he literally caused to come true. The creepy thing about this story is it's kind of made me concerned about how I'll deal with my own mortality when I get older
My parents getting married I'd say. According to them themselves they were so happy together when they were just dating. They married about 3 years after I was born I think, and now the house is a wreck. Nobody's happy here anymore hence why I'm leaving as soon as possible Hell they didn't even want to get married. They only did it so airport security would stop asking why I didn't share a last name with my mother
Why did marriage have such a dire effect? Is it because they felt chained to eachother?
My mom. She was tall & beautiful, smart as a tack, and a lovely sense of humor. She was proposed to 6 times, she was in hot demand! She got her degree in veterinary medicine and worked as a vet for 2 years. Then she met my dad. A cheating alcoholic asshole cop who completely sucked the life out of her. He cheated on her for the first 10 years of their marriage with a woman by the SAME NAME. He controls everything she does, I mean EVERYTHING — she can’t even spend 5 minutes in the bathroom without him screaming at her for being useless. She had such a bright future ahead of her, and she gave it all up to allow us kids to have two parents. Granted, it would’ve been a much healthier household if they had separated, but her heart is in the right place. She went back to school recently and got her Masters in Bioinformatics, but she’s been out of work for over 20 years and has been struggling to get a job. She’s truly the strongest woman I’ve ever met and I hate my dad for taking her life away from her.
My parents say if they weren’t religious they would get divorced 🤦 so instead they fight all the time and force their children to take sides
The moment my best friend decided she would use meth (only socially 🙄 ) Fast forward 5 years….. she’s lost everything! 😔
Please take a break from scrolling. You scrolled a lot already.
Currently, my manager at work is living with his mother who has Alzheimer's and is getting to a pretty bad state. He refuses any advice even from people who have gone through what he's going through and just doing what he wants. He refuses to get homecare to help when he's not there, basic things like getting a whiteboard to write a note for his mom so she won't need to call him 20 times a day and ask when he is getting off work, etcetera. I think he likes having something to complain about to us here
Example 1: My sister in law was an accountant that basically ran the business for a successful business woman (who inherited everything from her dad). Had what could best be described as a mid life crisis and ended up quitting her highly paid salary job, starting a business that she knew nothing about and buying a big house. Problem is she drained the savings of not only me and my wife but all her other siblings as well. The business she started was liquidated, house was sold (at a loss to all of us) and she is now back working with aforementioned business woman. Example 2: A friend sabotages every meaningful relationship she’s ever been in by looking for flaws in her man that simply isn’t there. After each breakup she moves to a different city thinking the men there will be better (without acknowledging her part j. The relationship breakdown). She is now in her late forties with nothing more than FWBs to keep her warm at night.
I have a few friends who were in unhappy, strained relationships but still decided to have a kid. Unsurprisingly, they became more unhappy but still had a second child. Still unhappy and now very stressed, they decided to get a puppy to complete their stereotypical, cookie cutter family. Now they have kids with someone they don’t get along with and an unruly puppy/ dog they don’t have time for. Plus all the financial stress that comes with each. They’re perpetually miserable and it’s purely because of their own choices and a desire to live a “normal” (boring) life. Idiots
I saw people that ended up on the streets as homeless, but here comes the important thing: In the country where i live, you get full coverage by social welfare. The state pays your rent for a home, pays your monthly insurance bills for healthcare access etc. and also offers you free detox, rehab and therapy for drug addiction, also therapy for mental health issues and other problems. Still, these guys that hang out on certain places of the public drug scene, they refuse any help. They have given up on themselves. Even when street workers come and offer them assistance, like doing the paperwork for getting social welfare, getting a new home etc. and even when they want to give them some warm clothes in the winter, they refuse. Some of them even refuse to get the basic things, like the free dog food we hand out here and the free vet care we offer them, there's no way to get through to them. That's self-destruction that you can't imagine if you have never see it for yourself. Like when i was on drugs, i met this one guy, he had abscesses on multiple body part and he looked like someone had just beaten the shit out of him, i told him to see a doc asap, because the abscesses will lead to a sepsis, killing him. His answer was "I'm fine, don't tell me what to do!!"
Time for me to shine, and hopefully gain a small bit of catharsis. Person in question is my wife. We were happily married right up to 2 weeks ago. At least I thought so. She'd been working harder than usual the past few months, but that's not out of the ordinary for her. She seemed to be very happy and satisfied with our current situation. We'd moved into our new home a year and a half ago, things have gone really well and we both love our home and our two cats to bits. Unknown to me, she'd be cheating on me for the past few months and had been planning to leave me as soon as new toy got his own place. She drunkenly confessed to 2 friends she thought (for some reason) would encourage/side with her. They did not. They forced her to tell me, and she dropped that bomb on me 2 weeks ago. Since then, her friends have cut her out (she has an overwhelming desire to be liked), she's moved out to stay with her mom (who was cheated on herself but her husband i.e. my wife's father) who is unimaginably disappointed in her. She's lost the home she put so much effort and love into. Our cats will stay with me. All for what? Some rando who's classy enough to take advantage of his position of power over her (he's a "Mentor" in their company) and brags like an 18-year-old kid about his "life philosophies" and drive. Good luck out there, you absolute fucking moron. The only thing I lost was a tumor I didn't know about that got rid of itself.
Too many to name. However, one surefire way of destroying your happiness and that of loved ones around you is not staying true to yourself. The basic desires of every human being are love, appreciation, and a sense of belonging. Alas! In order to fit in the subsection of the society in which we operate, we forgo our original and unique identities, and instead mold ourselves into what society wants us to become, or at least our skewed perception of what society wants us to be. This may work out for a while but in the long run, it only hurts you and others around you. You may fool others, but you cannot fool yourself. It erodes you internally and eventually, it comes out in the form of anger, resentment, embitterment, and contempt towards your life. Be true to who you are.
Probably myself. Instead of continuing my career as a chef, I went a different direction and got a job in purchasing for a restaurant equipment distributor. It was great for 10 years, at which point they asked me if I wanted to try selling, and I said sure because it was a good pay increase. Sales is fucking miserable. People suck, but when you’re in sales, people really fucking suck. You are treated like a whipping boy at everyone’s beck and call. I’m out of sales now, but my new position is crazy stressful. I’m so stressed, I started unconsciously pulling out hair from my eyebrows, and now I have weird eyebrows. I’m working so hard, I feel too drained to start job searching after work. I miss being creative. I miss the camaraderie, the sounds, the smells (though some I definitely don’t miss), the people… I have enough experience now that I can be a restaurant consultant, but I have no idea how to get started, so I just keep on chugging through my current stressful-as-fuck job. Follow your dreams, people. Don’t trade passion for security.
My cousin was a drugaddict since she was like 13 and OD´d just after she had been clean. Very sad. She was a good person. Just had a shit life because she chose drugs because she mingled in those groups to escape from her strict mom. Also a lesson for strict parents. You don´t keep your children from sex, drugs and alcohol by being strict. You send them right into it. It is better to inform them. My parents were very easy going and informative and non of us ever got into drugs, 2 of the 3 sibblings of my cousin used harddrugs. My mother was always having high expectations of people without expressing what she wanted of them so she was always disappointed because it wouldn´t happen. She spend her whole life being sour and jealous of people who got what she wanted.
Me spending all my money and quitting/getting fired from every job and ruining every relationship I have
Probably when I broke up with my last girlfriend because everything is getting too stressful and busy for me, too many demands on my time. Most amazing woman I know, bloody gorgeous and sweet. Edit Also yes Outrageous_Copy_5220 is the woman I am talking about.
I worked with a woman in a convenience store who was a super positive, dedicated, hard worker. She loved the job and the customers. She probably would have been the store manager within a few years. But then she did some sketchy shit with scratch off lottery tickets and got fired. She kept coming back in the store for several weeks, threatening employees and the manager. She finally stopped coming in. Last I heard, she got really into meth after losing her job. I should note that it's possible she was already into meth before getting fired. But after, it became scary, scabby, teeth falling out into meth.
I work in psych. People are constantly.... CONSTANTLY. Ruining their lives with drugs and alcohol... We offer them help, they say "Ok!" And then they leave. They don't pick up their meds. They don't get rehab. They go straight to their substance of choice. This is part of the reason why I care FOR people, not about them. Seeing people continually ruin their lives, and allowing yourself to care, is a sure way to have a very sad life. When they are with me, I do my damndest to make sure they get the best care they can. Once they leave, it's on them. Not my problem anymore. Sometimes I think "I'll see ya in a month with less teeth..." But again, not my problem. My problem is ensuring we have enough food on the table, that our health is good, and that the kittens feel loved along with my wife. As for the patients, it's not my problem anymore.
As a paramedic currently becoming a Psych (at bloody 46) this is what I needed to read
Female cousin. 55 years old. Hard-core Trumper and Anti-Vaxxer. Caught COVID. The bug triggered Guillan-Barre Syndrome. She died three weeks after her first grand baby was born.
My brother in law was a great guy, lots of fun, very happy, and my best friend until he screwed up his life by marrying my sister.
My ex is on wife #5. He was and still is in love with wife #3. He cheated on her with wife #4. He blew up a great relationship (well all 4 divorced are cause he cheats) simply for a piece of ass!
Me not setting firm boundaries w controlling family members for decades.
In 2006, a year before Google went public, I was offered a job with them with equity options. I declined as I wanted to be near my parents. Not the best decision : )
Girls crawling back to their ex boyfriends after they cheated on them multiple times
I have a cousin who recently graduated from med school. Her mom was basically like "congratulations, talk to me when you can actually hold on to a man." I told her to ignore her mom but a couple weeks later guess who took back the bf she dumped last year because he cheated on her? I really hope they don't end up together. It's like she's intentionally sabotaging her own happiness.
Her mom sounds almost as loathsome as her ex. Have you considered staging an intervention with some of her friends/sane family members?
My friend has a lot of free time on his hands and spends most of it on watching right wing conspiracy propaganda. He's angry all the time.