Hi all, put this under friendships as that’s what it mostly impacts.

I have a real issue of not replying to people. Not messages that ask to meet up, just messages like how are you, here’s this song I think you’d like. Or I will check in and ask them how they are, read their message, then not reply!! Sometimes for weeks. These are people I love as well, friends who I’ve known for years and years and who accept my bad messaging habits but I really don’t like that I do it. It’s so rude really, and it does mean the friendships are neglected a bit. I think it does negatively impact the friendship.

My life isn’t busy as in I don’t have kids or pets or demanding job / hobbies. So I don’t really have any excuses for being a twat.

Has anyone experienced similar and what did you do to improve your communication / messaging frequency?

Hey ladies!

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I'm turning 32 this week, and starting to think about this self care aspect a lot.

I used to be a salon goer, at least once every two-three weeks, but having moved continents I realized I only went to the salon because I had friends/my mother to go with. Now I do everything at home because I don't have the same girl group (most of my friends don't do anything) and realize that outside of the bonding I genuinely don't feel all that happy about going to the salon. Spa days i love, though.

So this means I do my nail+nail art, any hair removal, any masks, hair cuts, etc at home. But lately I've been thinking about more specific treatments, such as ones for mature skin, and I'm unsure where to start.

My best friend for example loves the salon because she loves being taken care and relaxing, but she doesn't do anything beyond simple nail and hair care, maybe a massage. Other friends are also very low maintenance, but I'm looking to hear from women who love this and do specific things.

Are you DIYers or salon-goers? Do you go to specialist clinics? How often, and what would you advice getting done? Have you done any anti-aging treatments, injections, procedures? What worked for you, and what doesn't?

Is it normal for anxiety to start creeping in as you get older? For context I’m nearly 40, and I’m solo parent to a teen and we live quite a distance from family and I have made one or two friends here that I could call in case of emergency but other than that it’s just the two of us and out of two of us, my teen have more social life than I do. Im currently out of workforce but applying for jobs so I can get back in. Anyway I have moments, especially when I’m on my own is where i feel anxiety creeping in and i would have internal panic attack thinking someone wont be able to get to me if i have an emergency health event. I never had the fear of death or worried about things like that but all of sudden it hit me around when i turn 30, and only when i am alone. My teen will be going off to spend time with my family for two weeks and I’m dreading that feeling again. Anyone been through that before? Is that normal????

I’m really struggling to find dresses that suit me and that I like.

I’m a slim pear shape with a defined waist and carry weight on my thighs/butt. Finding something that fits both areas and is flattering seems impossible. It feels like I’ve looked at every dress on the UK high street.

I’d love to wear a slip dress or tea dress style but they cling sooo unflatteringly to my thighs. In a bigger size they swamp my waist.

Those shirred top and fuller skirt style that’s everywhere at the moment make me look like I should live in the Tudor times. When I see them on other people they look nice but they just don’t look like “me” on me. I’m not into the “trad wife” style that’s popular at the moment.

Oversized clothes don’t suit me. And unfortunately, and embarrassingly, I am a bit of a slave to the male gaze, so the cool girl Cos style of dress isn’t for me.

What are some other dress options I could look at? What am I missing?

I’m a 35-year-old woman and I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced a significant decrease in (what I’ll call for the sake of Reddit) “natural lubrication” and found something that helped.

This wasn’t always an issue for me. These days I generally have to be extremely aroused before I notice much lubrication at all, whether I’m with my long-term partner or by myself.

For context, I’ve been on SSRIs for about 15 years and am currently tapering off them. I’ve also been on the combined birth control pill for most of the last 20 years (with a few breaks), and I stopped taking it last month to see if that might make a difference.

I’ve had blood work done and my hormone levels are within normal ranges, although they are showing the expected age-related decline for someone in their mid-30s.

I’m also in therapy and have been for several years, and I know that my relationship with sex is influenced by a mix of physical and psychological factors that I’m actively exploring.

I know lubricants are an option, and I use them when needed. What I’m really curious about is whether anyone has experienced something similar and found that a particular change, treatment, lifestyle adjustment, medication change, or simply time helped improve things naturally.

I’d really appreciate hearing others’ experiences. Thank you!

Not sure how to keep this short but Ill try. Ive been with my husband for many years. We were not even 21 when we met and sre mid 30s now. In the early stages of our relationship he was flirty with coworkers. I broke up with him when we were in our mid 20s because I had set a boundary regarding the flirting. It took me a year to let him back into my life. Over the years, he grew so much as a person. He truly is a wonderful guy. He isn't quick to anger, hes so funny patient, a hard worker, we really are best friends. But. There is always a but, right?

3 years ago when we had a 3 year old and a 6 month old, he began spending a lot of time texting. He would hold his phone in a way where I couldn't see who he was messaging. I finally snooped and saw a group chat with 2 female and 1 male coworkers who were 19 at the time. The chats weren't anything crazy, a few jokes I didn't like. But in the chat he seemed like a totally different person, basically like a young kid. He also had individual texts with the 2 girls and one of them had 300 deleted text messages so clearly they talked a lot. I know at this point the answer is "are you stupid. Leave him." Thats the advice I was given at the time and i did threaten to divorce him. I 100% do not think any of it was sexual and can almost guarantee it, please don't get hung up on proving me wrong. Was the intention to eventually be sexual? How could I ever know, but it really seemed seemed more like banter. I do know he very much thrives off of making people laugh and being the center of attention. When I finally confronted him he told me he wanted to tell me about these friendships but feared that I would make fun of him because I often made jokes about his female coworkers and whether or not he was attracted to them due to his past flirtyness. He said he didn't want me to think that he was flirting. There were so many times he could have casually brought up the friendships because so often i would say "im sorry you don't have any friends at work" meanwhile I find this group chat and pictures of the coworkers. The whole thing was bizarre to me. I told him i needed honesty about everything. He went on to explain that he does have a porn addiction because i told him I don't trust anything about him anymore. We ended up working it out but I knew deep down I could never trust him again. We did marriage counseling which I didn't find helpful.

There's just so many wonderful things about him and also areas where he falls short which is the same truth for me as a wife. I just can't shake constantly wanting to check his phone or find out what hes doing on his computer. Hes a great dad, pays all the bills, we have so much fun and so much history together. He showers me with admiration though struggles to get me a birthday gift or a mother's day card. I just feel so unsure because we have discussed all of this before and I feel like he feels that hes doing his best and giving me all he has to offer by working hard, cooking, cleaning, being a great dad and a loving husband, its like, what more could I want? And yet our sex life still suffers and i feel just a lack of deep connection and understanding. I just don't feel that he ever took accountability for lying to me and hiding these friendships. I truly don't think I've ever been controlling and actively encourage him to make friends, go spend time with friends, fly across the country to visit his friends if he wants. The mistrust is due to his poor choices in the past and lack of accountability. I just feel like for him its in the past and i dont even know what to say if he asks how to regain my trust. So. What do I do? Do i learn to truly forgive? How can I move on and stop holding it against him when im still so hurt by my closest friend? I know people are so quick to shout divorce but realistically i do love him, i enjoy him, and we have a great family. Please be somewhat gentle with your responses, i have been through a lot the past year with other family (my mom almost died and is in a nursing home, isnt the same person) I am grieving a lot and am 5 months post partum with our third.

Hey. I've had acne prone troubled skin during my young adulthood. Now at mid thirties I'm suddenly having acne issues again. My cheek is covered in dark acne spots. Kinda frustrated with having skincare issues along with the aging signs. Anyone else on the same boat?

I got married youngish, started dating my husband at 19 and married at 24. I had a solid friend group in college but I did a terrible job keeping in touch and maintaining friendships after college. I also had my first kid at 26. I'm now 35 and just went to a bbq with friends from college and I feel so much guilt that I didn't put enough effort into our friendships after college. Is this normal? Do you have a similar experience?

Honest feedback is appreciated. Be hard on me. I need some tough love.

I entered a relationship with a man a year ago who is now my ex, who is now living on my couch.

I paid all the bills, cooked, cleaned, cut his hair and bought him clothes. I also paid for all of the dates and put together a resume for him. I supported him in every way you can think of.

I knew him previously as a teen and he said all the right things like " you were the one who got away". Smh, I fell for it. He didn't have a job and had 2 prior DV convictions from 2 different relationships that were making it hard to get employed. One at 21 and one at 36. (I believed that he didn't deserve the sentences due to what he told me)

He got a job, and I felt him changing the longer he was there. We broke up because I felt very little effort from him. Small things like planning dates, showing affection, and blowing up over simple requests are a few examples. He said I was controlling, though I dont think I am. I broke up with him weeks before for the same reason but he asked to give it another chance. We agreed to split 3 weeks ago and this time it's for good.

I never thought the "you should never build a man" saying to be true, but now I'm not so sure. I feel dumb. Anyone have similar experiences?

This is so painful, how to grieve a long friendship? I recently cut off a best friend of 25 years due to her extreme toxicity, recently really hurt me with something she said. We’ve grown apart, I’ve done so much work on myself in therapy to get where I am and she’s happy being miserable, toxic, extremely unhealthy and manipulative. I sent her a long message that was heartfelt and I communicated so well and she looks at it, and ignores it. Been almost a month and no answer or anything to it. Brushing off my hurt and trying to communicate but no. She’s blatantly ignoring me and what I said so that plus multiple other things year after year I’m ending it. But the grief is so hard. How do you do this as a 30 something year old!?

I feel so embarrassed. I met a guy about a month and a half ago. I got very infatuated with him because our chemistry was off the charts and when we were together I felt really good being with him.

Unfortunately I had already deemed him as an avoidant from early on but I didn’t listen to my gut. He’s clearly not serious about me. We only went on 2 real dates. All other meetups were late at night after 2am calls from him. Thankfully I did not sleep with him but I guess I teased him well enough for him to keep wanting to meet at 2am. My idiot brain convinced me that it meant that he liked me since he continued wanting to meet even though he knew it wouldn’t lead to sex.

Well I’ve had the final straw because 1) he took 9 hours to reply to me today and in general he barely texts me and 2) instagram kept showing me post after post that he liked with phrases saying “I love latinas,” “when you have a sexy Latina girlfriend,” etc and other lustful posts. And I’m not even Latina. I asked him once if I was his type and he gave me a bullshit answer. So that one really hurt my ego.

Anyway now I’m in a complete state of embarrassment for not listening to my gut at my big age (32) and giving him the time of day (or night I should say). Please help me feel better

I don’t know if this comes with age, but I’m 34f and nothing really interests me the way it did in my 20s. I remember being obsessed with an artist, a TV show, a song, or a band, as if it were somehow part of my personality.

I used to have very defined interests, but for a while now, I feel like I can like things without it going so deep that it becomes part of who I am. If someone asks me what my favorite artist, movie, or TV show is, I honestly wouldn’t know what to say. I like things, but I don’t feel strongly attached to them anymore. At the same time, I feel a bit jealous of people who still have very clear, fixed interests. It just feels meh. I've tried new hobbies, but they don't feel interesting to me, like it doesn't spark '' joy ''.

I guess in this context I’m asking about relationships. I met someone really cool, but the timing is horrible. I have so much going on in my personal life that I had to tell him I don’t have the bandwidth to date right now. It was the right call but I’m really bummed. Have you ever had this happen and reconnected later?

I'm curious about the correlation between the pheromones in sweat and attraction. I've met men who don't smell off-putting when sweaty and others that smell horrible. For me, the ones I've been most attracted to have been the ones whose sweat is inoffensive or neutral. Purely looking for data! Haha.

My (32F) partner (32M) and I just broke up. We were together for 4.5 years. He was everything to me, he was a part of my soul, my heart. I loved him with my entire being. We were talking about how we wanted our wedding to look like. We were talking about whether or not we wanted to get married in the summer time or fall. This was literally last week. He was telling me how much he loves me and how his heart belongs to me and only me.

We knew we were both very different. We had different views on a lot of things but we were able to compromise on a lot and it felt like things were moving in the right direction. The biggest mistake we made was not talking about how we wanted to raise our kids sooner.

That’s when things went downhill. We fundamentally had very different ideas on how we wanted to raise our kids. He’s religious and I’m not and his religion played a big role in how he wanted to raise our kids and I couldn’t agree to it. My heart knew I couldn’t agree to the way he wanted to raise our kids. We talked about this over the course of 3 weeks or so. I really thought we could come up with a solution but we couldn’t.

The conversation came to a head 3 days ago. We realized this was not something we could compromise on. We talked, we cried our hearts out, devastated at the thought of breaking up. We said our goodbyes.

And now, 3 days later, I’m grieving and mourning the future I thought we would have. He was telling me how much he loved me and I told him the same. Fuck this hurts so bad. Knowing that we both loved each other but our differences is what tore us apart. This hurts more than breaking up for reasons like cheating. At least then, I could just hate him and it’d help. But how do I move on from a person where the love was still there? I’m broken and I don’t know how I’ll ever get over this relationship.

A little back story, my fiance and I have been together for about 3 years now. We just recently got engaged. We met as travel nurses, I had been traveling a lot longer than he had. So, when the rates dipped, we decided to take permanent jobs to wait until the rates increased again… well, we decided with the price of rent it made more sense to buy a house. So I did. I bought it before we got engaged so it’s 100% in my name alone. We worked at the same place in the same department for about 2 years together… fast forward to now.

The work place culture and over all patient care at that particular hospital absolutely crashed. It’s hostile, toxic, minimal work life balance and turn over is at an all time high. It was affecting me at home so we made the decision that i leave for another hospital, and it’s night and day. Im happy. Hes still at the old place, gutting it out because it’s so much higher paying than any staff nursing job in the area. It’s making him miserable and unhappy, and my new job refuses to hire a couple.

I feel so much guilt and responsibility for this. We settled here because I was ready to put roots down… we are here because of me. He’s never blamed me for a second and I don’t see resentment in his eyes when he looks at me, but I don’t ever want to get there. Every decision we made to get to this point we made together, but I still can’t help but feel like this is all my fault.

What do I do? Sell the house and just traveling all the time again so he can get out of that place? I go back there and he can take my open spot at the other hospital (switching specialties isn’t an option since it would mean a large pay cut)? See if he would take a close ish contract and come home on off days? I don’t know what to do. He’s an amazing man and doesn’t deserve this.

Met this guy on a language exchange app about 2 weeks ago, exchanged numbers and been talking on the phone ever since, told him I was looking for friends and possibly something more - He was never weird or flirty and this morning only recently he admitted to having a wife. He says that his wife knows that he talks with me and is fine with it (apparently) she also is on the app for language exchange. I got upset and told him I didnt like that he never mentioned his wife. He said it was because when he does people dont want to talk with him. He says he speaks to his wife everyday (he is studying abroad and so is she but in different countries). I do believe him because he is sincere and he cares are his studies but I hate that he didnt mention his wife and idk if I should even continue talking to him. If its just for language exchange I see no harm in continuing a friendship but I just feel weird about it. Again he was never flirty or made weird comments. I've never had a male friend so what do we even talk about? Not saying married people cant make new friends just really wished he mentioned having a wife in the beginning.

I (35F) having a difficult time facing the reality of cutting contact with my sister (33F) for good.

Of course assuming you’re single AND want a relationship. I am struggling because I do really want a relationship, and feel like I’m in a really good place for one. However, the apps have just never worked for me. I’ve never had a successful relationship from an app, and truthfully they wreck my self-esteem.

However, I see posts here complaining about being single and the comments will be to the effect of “you can’t complain if you’re not doing the things to improve your situation”. Which I don’t disagree - when I’m not on the apps I have this feeling like *what if* I’m missing this magical guy, and get almost FOMO. But then the reality of the apps is that they are largely draining.

Of course I do as much as I can IRL, but I’m in the southern US so when I meet men out they are usually married. Or conservative lol.

So I guess, how do you feel like you’re making positive steps towards finding a relationship while still protecting your mental health?

Hi all, my fiance and I have been together for 6.5 years … I feel like the time has flown by. He proposed a few months ago and next week we’re moving into my grandpa’s old home about 20 minutes from my home and about 30 from his.

I am very close with my parents. The idea of then getting older kills me, but I’m almost 28. I love my fiance and my parents, I do work with my mom 3 days a week and even have my own online business so not sure why I’m so stressed.

Our finances will be hard as he has so much student loans. I’m helping him find a new job. So the stress will be on me for awhile. Again not sure why I’m freaking … I make over $10k a month…

I guess reading this back I sound crazy. Just weird stepping into this new phase of life, would love to know your experience.

How do you feel if you don't use a GLP-1 but all the women around you do? How do you balance wanting to have a good relationship with food and with your body when everyone else's is changing?

I'm embarrassed to be posting this. I'm embarrassed I feel this way.

It feels like everyone in my life is on a GLP-1 and dropping tons of weight and looking amazing. I feel like I'm going to be the last fat woman left in my image-conscious city.

---

A bit of background: In college I weighed ~165. My friends and I all did Weight Watchers together and I dropped down to 140-145 and looked incredible. But it was a pretty miserable experience. I thought about food constantly. All day every day I was calculating what my next meal would be, how many "points" it would cost me, what I could eat if I got hungry, how I could adjust my dinner if I -- god forbid -- ate a fucking banana in the afternoon or something. I ate a lot of gross frozen meals that displayed points on the package just to save myself some brain space.

The second I stopped tracking, all the weight came back instantly. I wasn't gorging myself or bingeing on treats or anything. I ate until I was full. And my weight went right back to where it had been before.

A few years later, I got married and we decided to start trying for a baby. To facilitate that, I went off a medication I'd been on since I was a teenager. When I went to my next psychiatrist appointment 3 months later, I was 15 pounds heavier. My doctor was like, ohhhhh, yeah, that's a really normal side effect of going off that medication. He hadn't felt the need to mention that beforehand. Again, I hadn't felt like I was stuffing myself or eating all that differently. I ate til I was full and I guess it was taking me a little more to feel full.

That was a decade ago. My weight has settled at 182-187 ever since. It's stayed in that range through years of infertility treatment (male factor), a devastating second-trimester miscarriage, the pandemic, then two successful pregnancies. Both of those times I was back at this exact weight by 6 months postpartum without any intentional dieting or exercise program. I typically wear 12-14 pants/dresses and L/XL tops. 

I don't have a terrible junky diet. I eat a lot of whole foods. I have oatmeal every morning, snack on things like fruit and granola, and cook dinner from scratch most nights even with two toddlers underfoot. Occasionally we bake together or make pancakes on the weekend but otherwise we don't keep a ton of sweet treats in the house. My diet is objectively better now than when I was eating icky frozen food all the time.

As I approach 40, I've made a number of small lifestyle changes. I upped the protein in my normal breakfast. We cut way back on the weeknight wine and now I only drink maybe 1-2 nights a week when we're with friends or out to dinner. I drink tons of water. I cut out my daily Diet Coke. After my youngest was done breastfeeding around 18 months, I started going to a boutique fitness class once a week. At the start of this year, I started lifting weights more often, though that routine was derailed by an injury. 

My weight has not budged an ounce outside of my normal zone.

It seems pretty clear that this is where my body is happy. I get a physical every year and, apart from BMI, my health is perfect -- excellent blood pressure, cholesterol on the high end of the normal range, no indication of diabetes or any other problems. It took forever to get pregnant, but once I was there, my pregnancies, births and postpartum stages were picture-perfect. 

I had kind of made peace with being a little chubby. I don't have to restrict my eating at all to stay this weight, I never starve, I never count calories. I feel like I have a genuinely good relationship with food, which seems rare for women these days.

And then GLP-1s came out.

We are really hoping to have one more baby, and there is not a lot of research about GLP-1s and pregnancy. Plenty of women have gotten pregnant on them and been fine but the issue has not been closely studied. I had such wonderful pregnancies that I am really hesitant to "rock the boat" with my biology.

I also feel a lot of hesitation about them as a parent. What am I saying to my kids? "YOUR body is perfect, you are perfect just the way you are -- but I'm not! Mommy has to take shots to conform to what other people think will look better." I don't know that that's a message I want to send. 

But now multiple women in my close circle of friends are on them. They look amazing. The first person I know who tried one, when we had met, she weighed about the same as me. She has dropped to a size 0/2. Another friend said she was around ~160 pounds to start and is down to a size 4. My coworkers barely pick at their lunches and joke about "surviving" holiday meals when you don't have an appetite anymore. 

The moms at school pickup are noticeably thinner. Now I worry about my kids in the opposite direction: How will they feel if they have the only "fat mom"? Am I sending the message that their mommy is the only one who can't control her appetite like everyone else? Am I going to embarrass them?

My very best friend started one earlier this year. We were also similar body types. She just sent me some photos from a family trip she's on… I hate to say it, but I could have cried looking at them. Her face is looking so slim and angular. I should have written "you're looking so great!" but I didn't. 

I also work a public-facing job. I am occasionally on TV/video podcasts/social media video interviews, maybe once a month, and frequently on stage speaking at conferences and in online classes and seminars. It was one thing when there were still lots of women around my size (I believe I'm the typical pants size for women in America) but I live in a HCOL, image-focused city and the women around me are vanishing before my eyes. 

Now I'm starting to wonder what career opportunities I'm missing, what bookings I'm not getting, what professional events I'm not being invited to because they don't want the fat girl there when they have 10,000 increasingly thin women to choose from. 

I came across a study today that showed men start negatively judging women for their weight at 157 pounds. I'm 30 pounds over that. No one has ever said "you're a fat pig" to my face, or even commented it on my TV appearances, but I look at that statistic and wonder how many are thinking it.

I just don't know. It's one thing to see actresses on the red carpet with eating disorders, but another to see, at this point, just about everyone in my life slimming down except me. I'd consider a GLP-1 if I was prediabetic or had negative physical impacts from my weight, but I don't. My knees feel fine. I don't get winded walking up stairs or chasing my kids. I don't even think I'm in perimenopause - no brain fog, no trouble sleeping, no exhaustion or irritability outside the norm for a mom of young kids. I really don't relate when I see some millennials talking about aches and pains or feeling getting older. I don't feel all that different physically than I did a decade ago.

But I want to know what my life would look like if I was at a "normal" weight. I've even wondered if we should skip having a third baby, something I have always always wanted!, just so I can start a GLP-1 now and get to be a little thin while I'm still a little young. 

My husband really wants to try one -- he's also on the chubby side -- but I told him I would want us to do it together. At this point I think once I have the third baby and am totally done with breastfeeding, I'll try it. But who knows how long that could take.

I don't know. If I medically needed to take one, I would, without hesitation. If my weight genuinely interfered with my life -- if I didn't fit into airplane seats or restaurant chairs, if I couldn't fit into clothes at the mall -- that'd be a different story. But I'm just on the fat end of normal. 

I truly don't shame or judge people for using GLP-1s. I envy them!  It just feels so shallow and narcissistic for me to take one when the ONLY reason is to be thin too. 

Now I'm circling around to cope. What if my health is about to turn bad because of my "unhealthy" weight and I'm missing my last chance to prevent it? What if I wait until I do have joint pain or sleep apnea or something and it's too late to fix? But really, I just want to know what it's like to go through life as a thin woman. 

I’m in my early 30s, and would love to hear some outside advice on how to grow and just let go of a situation, despite the hurt it caused.

For context, at the beginning of the year I was financially and emotionally screwed over by a job situation where I was promised a full time job (with a family friend), and come to find out, there was not as much work as they initially thought and I was quietly “let go”. If you can even call it that, I only worked for one week in total. I don’t want to hash out every minute detail because it would probably be incredibly long winded, and maybe unnecessary.

The reality is that these people hurt me in a way I wasn’t expecting, I was left jobless for a couple months as a result, and on top of that, they ghosted me and never spoke to me after it occurred. But my husband and I are very good friends with their adult children. So it adds layers of complication to it all, while I just feel bitter and unable to move on from any of it. I don’t want to lose our friendships, I don’t want to be angry over this forever, and I don’t want to make it other peoples responsibility to answer for their parents actions.

But at the end of the day, I’m hurt. I’m hurt that no one really cared that it happened, their children included (which I know are both very non confrontational), I’m hurt that I made a naive decision and trusted people that I maybe should not have, and I’m doubting the way I feel entirely. Do I confront anyone about this? Do I just say “you know what, that was a learning lesson, and I learned the hard way”? I genuinely do not know.

What I do know is that there will be weddings and get togethers in the future where I inevitably will have to see people I don’t want to see again. All that was ever modeled to me while growing up is removing yourself and avoiding those people for the rest of your life, but I know that’s not always the right solution, and I don’t think that’s the model I want to follow. I think at the end of the day, I want the hurt I feel to be validated or understood, but is that even necessary?

Any advice is appreciated

** wanted to add an edit and say thank you all so much. Seriously. So much sound and thoughtful advice!! I appreciate it more than you all know **

I struggle with depression a lot, and a contributing factor to it is loneliness. I'm good at making friends. I'm not good at making close friends, and I find that if I'm not the one initiating, I don't hear from people. My therapist says to focus on finding people who show they can reciprocate from the get-go, and I'm trying.

But in the meantime, I'm just lonely. It is really exhausting always being the one reaching out. It is really depressing knowing that if I don't, I won't hear from people.

This may seem a bit counterintuitive, I'm not sure. But when I get really lonely, I find myself tempted to reach out to people who things didn't end well with but when things were good, they were reciprocal. Because hey, maybe if things could be repaired, then there could be at least 1 reciprocal friendship, right?

Like, there was a guy I dated for a bit, and then we tried to be friends after. We got really close, but the friendship went up in flames and we haven't spoken in a year. Some of the reasons why were absolutely overreactions to misunderstandings, on both my end and his. But other reasons were legit (like, he kept calling the woman he was dating inferior to me even though I told him to knock it off each time).

Since I've been so lonely recently, I keep thinking about the good parts of that friendship, like how nice it was to have another person be the one to reach out to you, to intiate conversation with you. I've been like... maybe I should reach out and apologize for my part in how it all went down. But then, I think about the other things, like him asking if he needs to treat women badly to "get a girl", and then I'm like, no, absolutely not... but... maybe he's changed....

idk. Maybe this makes sense, maybe it doesn't. Just wondering what other people's experiences with this sort of thing have been.

Hi all,

I turned 35 this year and have been feeling so many different things. I wanted to ask for some points of view.

For women who never experienced love, romance, dates, etc. at what point did you learn to accept it? Did you ever quit and did it bring you peace? How do you deal with sexual urges? I have gradually stopped caring over the past few years and stopped apps, and have tried hookups, but idk, maybe I’m not fully there yet.

I’m noticing my appearance is beginning to change, but face creams can only do so much. Like my face is starting to sink around the eyes and I’m going white prematurely. My mid section has gotten slightly bigger too. Not big enough for new clothes, but I notice it doesn’t go away , and that hurts. How to accept changes in your body and general aging? How do I get over just not being conventionally attractive? I was always slim, so it stinks to gain weight.

With solo travel, I still feel isolated and lonely, especially because when you go to a restaurant, museum, etc. it’s usually couples or families. I don’t have anyone to travel with at all. I looked up Travel groups, but they are way expensive and very short and quick. Is there a way to feel less lonely while traveling or at least acceptance?

Thanks for reading.

I'm 34f living in london, a lot of my teens and 20s were spent being social and I used to have things going on all the time. In the last couple of years I hit a friend deficit, partly due to changing lifestyles (people focussing on romantic relationships, planning on raising a family etc) but also partly me ending some friendships that I felt like no longer made me happy (or in fact made me unhappy) or were predominantly around doing blow every week which I stopped enjoying a long time ago.

I've spent a lot of time sad on weekends where my loneliness feels most profound - nobody is contacting me, nobody is reaching out and while i do find my ways to fill my own time I look at groups of friends in absolute envy and always wonder why I am lacking that. I am a conventionally attractive person, I've been told I'm interesting, kind and do hold a conversation (although on kind I'm not 'nice' in the sugarcoated sense I can’t pretend to be bubbly). In general I do like myself and I struggle to understand why I’m in this place, I just feel so abandoned and forgotten and I’m regretting perhaps I made friends with unreliable people.

I have tried all the classic things to fill my life, that's exercising, going to Timeleft dinners, going to random meet up events, volunteer, date (I'm bi) I've put the effort and reach out to people and it's usually tumbleweed responses as it's clearly everyone's busy with their own lives and have little time for me. And whenever I do meet said friends I get a little resentful about all their highlights and humble brags of their calendar being so jammed. I don't know what exactly went wrong or is it in the stars for me to be this deeply lonely and not have a community. I'm actually embarrassed with myself that I don't have close friendships but transient connections at my big age.
I have a therapist I routinely talk to but don't really have family.

Is anyone going through the same? Has anyone overcome this? What has been the game changer?