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Chris_B PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING: 3 important tips to get the most out of this section
  • replies: 0

Hi everyone, The Relationships & Family Issues section is one of the busiest here on our forums. It's also one of the areas where we find members can get themselves into trouble! Before posting here, take a deep breath and be mindful of the following... View more

Hi everyone, The Relationships & Family Issues section is one of the busiest here on our forums. It's also one of the areas where we find members can get themselves into trouble! Before posting here, take a deep breath and be mindful of the following 3 tips: 1. Do you really want to share this with the world? This is a public forum. Are you thinking of posting something that could identify you to a friend or family member? Once you've posted, you can't delete what you've written and we don't take posts down from here unless they've broken one of our community rules. This is because our members spend a lot of time composing replies, and there is a much wider audience that gets a lot out of reading what has been written. It's not fair to ask the community for support, then ask to have it removed once you've read it so others can't also benefit. Use discretion when posting here - think about the level of detail you are sharing, and think also about who might know you are posting here. Also, please keep it clean: this is an all ages forum and explicit discussions about sexual problems are not permitted. Threads and posts of this nature will be removed and your account placed on a moderation hold. 2. What do you want to get out of posting here? Relationship and family issues are stressful. Members sometimes post here seeking advice about a relationship that has broken down, but find themselves getting upset when they don't agree with the response they get. This is a peer support forum, meaning we are not mental health professionals. We are people of all ages and backgrounds, with a wide range of life experiences. While we aim for our discussions to be conducted respectfully, people here will respond with the truth as they see it, from their own experiences and perspectives. We are not here to take sides. Offence is almost never intentional, but it can be sometimes taken. The advice you will see here is not intended to be a substitute for professional counselling. 3. What other support do you have? Most people posting on our forums (about any issue) use this space as a supplement to other supports. This forum is not and cannot be a substitute for offline supports, but it is often a good place to start the ball rolling and find the courage for seeking help. If you are relying solely on an internet forum to resolve your relationship or family issues, you are likely to be disappointed. Check out the Healthy Homes section of our Healthy Families website for further information and resources.

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Flamingo1989 I have no one in my life - lonely
  • replies: 34

Hi everyone I'm new and need to share my story with someone. I am 40 years old. I have never had a boyfriend. I have no friends only work colleagues I make small talk with. My mum is dying of cancer and my dad married to her for 40+ years is falling ... View more

Hi everyone I'm new and need to share my story with someone. I am 40 years old. I have never had a boyfriend. I have no friends only work colleagues I make small talk with. My mum is dying of cancer and my dad married to her for 40+ years is falling apart. My brother wife hates me. She doesn't understand who I am or what I suffer from. I don't have a close relationship with my brother and don't get to see my niece and nephew because my sister in law won't allow it. I live alone with my 2 cats. Quite frankly as of now I feel so afraid and alone. I fear how I will ever feel normal like everyone else on society. I struggle to hold my minimum wage job and will most likely lose this too next year. I feel like I have lost everything. I have recently learnt in the past 5 years that life is brutal and even the people who say they love you and will never leave your side, do eventually. I find it extremely difficult socially and have crippling anxiety. What is the point of going on? Life is only going to get worse. How can I manage? I suffer from BPD. Being alone is my biggest fear. The nightmare is real.

Ginger00 Annoying Friend
  • replies: 3

Hello everyone, I am new on this so bear with me! thought I'd get some advice from this dilemma So 3 years ago I reunited with an old primary school friend (from prep to grade 2). It was good in the beginning and I'd thought we'd remain as regular fr... View more

Hello everyone, I am new on this so bear with me! thought I'd get some advice from this dilemma So 3 years ago I reunited with an old primary school friend (from prep to grade 2). It was good in the beginning and I'd thought we'd remain as regular friends however as time went on, she became somewhat fixated over me. She would always call me her "best-friend", be overly attached to me, set notifications on for when I post on socials, send long cheesy paragraphs about our friendship to me, - it felt weird because I've never reciprocated the same feelings she had for me...and all sorts of things! In casual conversations I would point out that I didn't feel the same way and just saw her as a regular friend. She, however didn't take the memo and continuously did the same things which infuriated me. A few weeks ago, she said and I quote "Looks like your best friend won't be coming down to see you"...and went along with her "fairytale"of us lol (note she lives in a different state) and that was my last straw. I sent her paragraphs of everything that I've kept bottled up for years, I was assertive. She apologized but that only lasted a week before she became annoying again. I blocked her on all socials just now and want it to keep it that way. This whole situation feels toxic. I am done talking to her about the situation, Im done being nice. I don't know if what I did was right and I just need someone advice on this sticky situation :'( Thank you for taking the time to read

summerhaven06 ex friends with benefits
  • replies: 3

I had a friends with benefits with a guy for about three years. I was in love with him and he knew this. I also knew he didn’t love me back but honestly believed he cared a lot about me. We would sleep together a few times a week. We stopped hooking ... View more

I had a friends with benefits with a guy for about three years. I was in love with him and he knew this. I also knew he didn’t love me back but honestly believed he cared a lot about me. We would sleep together a few times a week. We stopped hooking up almost a year ago now as he started dating someone. Since then he had continued to message me, tell me he missed me, wanted to hook up with me etc. I never said any of this to him in return but I did participate in general texts here and there to be nice and I did honestly want to stay friends. When the conversation would turn into something flirty from his end I’d stop messaging and tell him he can’t say those things to me anymore. A few months ago I said to him enough is enough as I have feelings for you. The messages saying he missed me weren’t fair as he knew I still loved him. I said either end things with your girlfriend and we can be friends or you stay with her and never talk to me again as it’s messing with my mental health. He’d cry to me on the phone saying he can’t loose me and that he loves me too and he’d end things with her. I waited a week and he just didn’t end his relationship with her. We cried and yelled to each other on the phone after the week went by. I was a mess, so hurt. I asked him one final time what decision he was going to make and he said he was sorry but can’t end things with her because she’s pregnant. I was beside myself at this point and said I hate him. He then replied “don’t make me kill myself.” I rushed over to his house banged on the door hoping he was alive. He was. We both looked like we’d been crying for days. He stood at the window next to his front door and voiced for me to leave as his girlfriend had just got there. So I left. And haven’t seen or spoken to him since. It’s been a few months now and I have mutual friends with the girlfriend, one being her sister. To my knowledge she isn’t pregnant. I know she could’ve aborted it but I believe she never was as the timeline didn’t add up (he told me he loved me and was ending things with her after he apparently already knew she was pregnant). Apart of me feels like I need to explain this all to the girlfriend. I think about it a lot but have deleted all of our messages so have no proof any of this happened. I think I would want to know if my boyfriend was saying these things to someone I knew he used to regularly hook up with. Please help!

Rainshaddow Worried about mum
  • replies: 6

Hi all , just wondering if anybody can shed some light on what may be going on with my mum , she has become rather abusive , calling me a liar , an alcoholic ,( I am neither , scrupulously honest and not had a drink in 7 yrs , and gave up only becaus... View more

Hi all , just wondering if anybody can shed some light on what may be going on with my mum , she has become rather abusive , calling me a liar , an alcoholic ,( I am neither , scrupulously honest and not had a drink in 7 yrs , and gave up only because I'd pretty much stopped anyway and was getting older and just wasn't interested anymore ) wanting to know where I'm going and who I am talking to , has accused me of leaving my capital city to move home because the police are after me ( total rubbish , not even had a traffic ticket in ten odd yrs ) accused me of wanting to take over control and ownership of our family property ( not possible or happening as its owner by multiple extended family ) berates me over having quit a bad job I only had for 3 weeks ( along with her telling me it wasn't the job for me ) and is now not speaking to me , I live in the old family home I and my 2 brothers grew up in , my mother lives with her husband in his home some 12 km away , my mother has always idolised my next brother down ( S ) and seems to have blamed me for everything for as long as I can remember , she was really nice when I first got back to my home town but now is wanting money from me for repairs to the old house that she and her husband insisted was their responsibility and nothing to do with me , my mother looks at me and says I look like and sound like my younger brother , my reply was I am the eldest he must have picked mannerisms from me , not the other way round , our youngest brother was found deceased in Qld around the time of covid starting in Aus , March 2020 , suspicious circumstances with an ongoing police investigation, my mum won't share any details of the progress of the case with me for some reason , she gets angry and says I am criticising her , ( I'm not ) I asked her husband for an update and he did tell me things and then said I was being too hard on her by asking questions , she had lost a son as afterall , I couldn't help but say that I too had lost him , I looked after him for sometime when she threw him out of home , she had also thrown me out yrs earlier , any ideas ?

sav8331 my partner left but she was confused
  • replies: 8

Hello all, i am confused and having trouble dealing with what has happened in my life. i was with my partner for over 9 years we been married for 5 years and have 2 children and our life we built together. one day i came home from work and she ended ... View more

Hello all, i am confused and having trouble dealing with what has happened in my life. i was with my partner for over 9 years we been married for 5 years and have 2 children and our life we built together. one day i came home from work and she ended the marriage with no fight no conversation nothing, this is what i have been struggling with as i dont understand how someone could just do that. there were no discussions nothing just over an she left. since then she has done everything to stop me being part of her life and i dont know why she became like this. i have since been told she confided in her sister that gave her very bad advice. she had told her sister that she didnt know what she wanted in life any more whether what we have is what she wants or if she still loves me, she was just so confused with life and what was going on in our lives. we never argued and everyone including myself never saw it coming. i just dont know how to process this or cope with this as i am still madly in love with my wife but all she is doing is running away and pushing me and everyone else away that doesnt agree with her right now.

Helarctus Through the corrective lens: How medication has changed things
  • replies: 4

So as a chronic depressive, I managed myself without medication for a few decades, during which I met my wife, had kids, jumped from job to job and did all sorts of silly things with the occasional hiccup along the way, leading to a few stints "insid... View more

So as a chronic depressive, I managed myself without medication for a few decades, during which I met my wife, had kids, jumped from job to job and did all sorts of silly things with the occasional hiccup along the way, leading to a few stints "inside" locked wards of the various psych hospitals local to where-ever we were. Then I hit a few heavier speed bumps and jumped the curb, ploughing sideways, on fire, through the bushes with the music cranked to eleven. Metaphorically. Skip to now, various medication rotations and trials later, 3rd party observers commenting that I look better, they wouldn't know I had been depressed, etc. Except I feel the same or worse most days, the meds just make maintaining the façade easier. COVID-19 has also helped, reducing the amount of contact with others who might otherwise have opportunity to observe and comment. Which brings me to now v.s. then. On the meds, I am meant to be "better" and more the person I actually am, and I note that I have become or am disengaged emotionally from my wife and children. They exist, I am aware of them and that I have responsibilities and obligations in keeping them alive and well, but there is no sense of affection. I check in, help out, etc. because that is "the thing to do". They are strangers to me otherwise. I don't seem able to empathise with them, I just analyse who and what is in front of me and deduce if the situation requires my intervention or to get out of the way. I can recall that I used to feel something else, I can see pictures from years ago where the person who could have been me, seems to have been happy or excited. Its all facts now, like looking at an old newspaper article that tells you the temperature on the day but not what it was like to walk around in it. Everybody else seems happier with me on this blend. My wife has stated so, which begs the question as to why she married me then when I was not who I am now? Why keep taking the meds at all if I am not feeling a benefit? The doses I am on to get to this state require my GP to phone the prescription through to some national centre for authorisation to get more because they will slowly kill me by poisoning my organs. Every month I shovel out more money that could be put aside for the wife and kids. Every day the cost vs benefit skews more to the former than the latter. I am not ok, at some point I'm going to fail at pretending to be ok. Have some calls to make.

w1nn1e Constantly let down in friendships....
  • replies: 3

Hi everyone. Hoping I can get some advice. I'm a person that has very few close friends. Without sounding arrogant, I feel like I am a person who goes above and beyond for their friends but lately I've been noticing I rarely get it in return. It's ex... View more

Hi everyone. Hoping I can get some advice. I'm a person that has very few close friends. Without sounding arrogant, I feel like I am a person who goes above and beyond for their friends but lately I've been noticing I rarely get it in return. It's exhausting and makes me feel extremely down about myself, like people just don't care about me. I know that's not true, but as I grow up I find it harder to accept that people just don't value friendships the way I do, I guess? I know its something I should just accept but I'm finding it difficult. I don't know if I'm being too sensitive or what but its things like common courtesy that some people in my life just don't have and it really upsets me when they don't show it. For example, I am planning something special for my birthday which is extremely important to me and 2 people that I thought were close to me kinda just flaked on it without a proper apology and I also know that they won't bother to organize anything else at another time as an alternative. Again, its the whole different mindset thing that really bugs me because I would never do that to a friend. I know the world doesn't revolve around me btw, this last year has just been difficult for me loosing friendships over things that could be easily sorted with honesty and open conversation but I've just had to let it go because I know I deserve better. It still hurts though. Any advice or thoughts from anyone who has experienced a similar friendship rut would be appreciated.

Guest9337 Sex & intimacy in Relationships. Monogamy, polygamy, polyamorous, asexual, sexless, open, variable, intimate and consentual.
  • replies: 3

G'day Everyone I hope you are all happy healthy and wise! Welcome to a thread where we shall discuss Sex in Relationships. Please follow all the guidelines about the topic already published on bb and please use the report post to keep the topic civil... View more

G'day Everyone I hope you are all happy healthy and wise! Welcome to a thread where we shall discuss Sex in Relationships. Please follow all the guidelines about the topic already published on bb and please use the report post to keep the topic civilised thx. So as I always do when I come to a new place I seek out the values and rules of the community and see how those ideals relate to myself and my perceptions of others, and around and around up and down, inside out and outside in, left n right, and a dance about it all too! Fidelity is a huge topic for long term relationships here in Australia. The standard aussie cis-position idealised is, man+woman become husband and wife and have great monogamous sex for a lifetime, if the kids don't interfere! Reality is much less idealised for many... but might be just as "healthy" regardless! On BB I see a lot of people who are hurt by the infidelity of partners. I see a lot of people who are hurt by the lack of intimacy in a relationship. I see people acknowledging shallow sex in casual relationships is unfulfilling. Sexless is defined as less than 3 times a year by some sources, others hold less than once a month or 10 times a year as low sex frequencies. Hypersexuality is considered to be thinking and feeling sexual so often that it interferes with work, relationships and life in general. So between sexless and hypersexuality outliers are the positions of auto-erotic and polyamorous. That being sex with oneself only, and sex with multiple consenting and informed partners. And we reject in this thread all the horrible nastiness of non-consenting sex, in this thread we come in as people seeking ways to negotiate consenting fulfilling and healthy sex inside of relationships. So lets start with me... online I can fall in love with somebody just by reading their words, apparently this is called "pansexual", but for me it is more akin to platonic love having nothing sexual about the feeling. In the physical world I am bisexual, monogamous and loyal inside a long term marriage as a husband to a wife I deeply love. By the definitions above, I am also in a sexless marriage... and I am frustrated about that. What do I do?

toile Copying with infidelity/ long distance/ forgiveness or moving on
  • replies: 3

Hi there, I’m here just to take things out of chest as the pain and hurt I’m going in thru is extremely unbearable. I have a very loud, bubbly personality but I’ve been reduced to few words a day. here is my story. I’ve been in a relationship for 11 ... View more

Hi there, I’m here just to take things out of chest as the pain and hurt I’m going in thru is extremely unbearable. I have a very loud, bubbly personality but I’ve been reduced to few words a day. here is my story. I’ve been in a relationship for 11 years. Met my boyfriend after high school. Our relationship was great. We travelled a lot together, we were always there for each other, supported each other, we both bought our house (separately) and made plans to move to the UK last year. Due my cultural upbringing we were not allowed to live together. Last year, we decided that we needed to take our relationship to the next level and get engaged. He asked my parents for their blessings which they provided and we were planing to have our formal engagement party on July 3 2021. On thé night of 24 June, I received a call from a girl using my boyfriend’s number at 2am telling me that she was sleeping in my boyfriend’s bed and she’s done so for the last 3 months. on that night, my world changed. My boyfriend later admitted to me that she wasn’t the only woman he cheated on me with. There was other 4 women. He admitted to the whole story but only after he continued to sleep with the other girl after I already found out about her for 3 days. The girl shared with me their texts, they took videos having sex and they even made plans to move to the uk together. After I called off the engagement, He apologised and all, he was very remorseful and given that he’s the only man I’ve known and I still love him... I decided to work things out with him. However he’s now moving to the UK next month and I just learnt I can’t move as I’ve just missed the deadline for visa application as I just turned 31. he wants to work things out but I’m having issues trusting him here let alone trusting when he will be overseas. I can’t think straight, I can’t sleep, I can’t breath… all I want to do is cry all the time. I feel extremely hopeless. I cannot believe that he cheated on me… and even when he’s trying to be nice all I think about is him and the other woman. I just wish I could go in a coma for 6 months and not wake up. I can’t deal with this pain anymore. I am hopeless.

Mr K Moving Forward after separation, new possibilities but how to respect the past?
  • replies: 3

After accepting that my relationship was officially over (not the same as emotionally over), I have managed in many ways to live a better life than I had for over a decade. I still have 50% care of my beautiful children, I'm still managing to pay my ... View more

After accepting that my relationship was officially over (not the same as emotionally over), I have managed in many ways to live a better life than I had for over a decade. I still have 50% care of my beautiful children, I'm still managing to pay my way in life as well as supporting my past commitments i.e. as we have not yet formalised the separation of assets so I'm still paying a mortgage as well as rent and other living costs. I have met a new partner who feels like a real soulmate and my mental health is steady. My kids seem happy and content at least when with me which was, is and always will be my number one priority. What I struggle with is when the ink is dried and the divorce and assets are finalised how do I respectfully maintain my relationship with my now in-laws, who have remained amicable and supportive, whilst developing my new relationship?